BLACK SHARK 2

Dominating Shark of Gaming Ocean

TThe utopia of compressing the power-packed gaming laptops and PSP in the pocket fitting device was just a dream some years back. Gamers who are on constant move always desired a device which could travel with them without adding extra weight and the immense growth of gaming in post media time caught the attention of the smartphone companies who thought to produce smartphones solely

dedicated to gaming. The launch of Black Shark 2 has created lots of buzzes that whether the new Black Shark 2 is just a gaming smartphone or more than that. So, we will be clearing the fog around the curiosity of new Black Shark 2 in this review of ours. We’ve got 8GB model with us for review.

Design

The new Black Shark 2 sports a solid and bold look with a matte finish in black colour. From the looks of the phone, it could be easily seen that it is designed in such a manner which will attract the game lovers. The design is not just for giving the phone a fancy look but to add more value to the phone which is that the X shaped antenna lies beneath the contours for receiving better network connection. The handling of the phone is quite comfortable due to its sharp edges, slim design, and reasonable body weight. The beauty of the phone is mainly due to its rear side where besides the designs you can sport dual camera sensors followed by an LED flash. The rear cameras are projected little outside of the body which gives the bump look to them. The other interesting thing at the rear side is the logo of the phone which is placed in the middle of the rear side and has the illuminating capacity as the logo lights up when you are using the phone. The company has given special

preference to notifications by placing two LED strips on both sides of the phone which acts as notification indicator by lighting up when any notification arrives which is quite useful especially when you are busy playing games or have kept the phone at distance. The glowing logo of the phone adds extra appeal to it. You can customise the light settings as per your need. The front fascia of the phone is dominated by the screen and there are bezels on top and bottom of the screen with selfie camera on the top side of the screen. At the right side of the phone lies the power button and the and the Shark Key for entering into Shark space designed for gaming. To the left side of the phone lies the volume rockers. The top side of the phone is blank whereas at the bottom lies the USB Type-c port and the dual Sim tray. One thing should be kept in mind before buying the Black Shark 2 that it does not allow expansion of internal storage as there is no slot to place microsd card. There is no headphone jack but you get headphone jack adapter in the box in case you need to connect a headphone. There is no physical fingerprint sensor on the body of the phone rather there is an inbuilt fingerprint sensor on display which is pretty fast and accurate in its response. The phone also supports the face unlock feature which also works very accurately. Sadly, there is no IP certification for accidental liquid exposure.

Display

The Black Shark 2 comes with AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of size 6.39inch full HD+. The display does not follow the pattern of the bezel-less screen rather it opted to have bezels on top and bottom of the screen so that while playing the game you can rest your hand easily on that without having any worries of pressing wrong control. The colours reproduced are very bright, vivid, punchy and sharp. The display also has low latency and pressure sensitivity which allows better control while tapping the screen, especially in intense gaming scenarios. The phone has a screen resolution of 1080x2340 pixels and has 430 nits of peak brightness which allows the screen to be visible under bright daylight. The screen also various host modes like True view, natural cinema, a super cinema which automatically adjusts the colour profile based on ambient lighting conditions. The aspect ratio of the screen is 19:5:9 which offers wide viewing angles. The phone has another interesting feature which is Master touch which allows the users to designate a large area of the screen for giving commands in specific games.

Platform

The software running the Black Shark 2 is a light custom Skin called Joy UI on top of Android 9.0 Pie which is a stock Android with no bloatware. The software of the phone is very neat and comes with the phone’s most interesting feature which is Shark Space and this feature can be enabled only by pressing the Shark Key. The activation of Shark Space clear’s the phone memory for the smooth running of the phone by blocking notifications, network activity.

The new Black Shark 2 is a true working beast when it comes about handling the tasks because the processor of the phone is capable of handling any task without

even breaking a sweat. Powering the functioning of the phone is powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 7nm processor with octa-cores where one core is clocked at 2.84GHZ Kryo 485, three cores are clocked at 2.42GHZ Kyro 485 and rest four cores are clocked at 1.78GHZ Kryo 485 and this division of cores are specifically programmed t to handle the tasks very easily. There is no issue of any functional lag from the processor be it gaming, multitasking, movies, etc.

All games ran in their high graphics quality without any glitch or heating the device and the result of such high graphic deliverance is made possible by Adreno 640 GPU of the phone. The liquid cooling 3.0 of the phone does an impressive job keeping the phone cool even when intense gaming. The performance of the phone can be adjusted as well by going to Game Dock’s gamer studio section. There are certain settings to choose the performance level while playing games. The device does get heated up despite the effective cooling system when we opted for one of the modes in the performance setting which is Ludicrous mode and also showed fast consumption of the battery. The processor gets its support from the powerful RAM availability of the phone which is 8GB whereas the ROM size of the phone is of 128GB with no slot to increase the storage.

Cameras

The new Black Shark 2 is not just a gaming phone as it holds the ability to give you pictures of brilliant quality. The phone has dual rear camera sensors where the primary sensor is of 48 megapixels with a wide lens and with an aperture of f/1.8. The secondary sensor is of 12MP with a telephoto lens and aperture of f/2.2 having PDAF and optical zoom.

The detailing of the images are very good and the image quality, color, sharpness are also on point. The images captured at daylight are crispy with decent contrast. The color saturation is good as well but on some occasions, the macro shots result in oversaturation of the images. The night shots are decent as well, as the cameras manage to capture detailed and clear images but not that of supreme quality which one opts to find in phones of such price range. The lack of night mode further adds to the disability of the phone to deliver a good quality of images at night. The selfie camera, on the other hand, is of 20MP with an aperture of f/2.0. The HDR does a decent job and helps to lock on the subject very quickly. The selfies captured were very good in quality with proper saturation and color balance. The selfies captured at night does get downgraded in terms of quality when compared to daylight selfies. Overall, about the cameras of Black Shark 2, it could be said that they do a decent job of delivering images but not up to the expectations which one try to get in phones of such range.

Battery

The Black Shark 2 is backed by a powerful battery to allow the users to enjoy games and other activities to fullest throughout the day so that it could keep on the tag of a gaming smartphone. The battery power of Black Shark 2 is of 4,000mah which when tested lasted a whole day with a single charge even after playing games of high requirements for hours. But if in the performance setting you opt for gameplay setting at the maximum level the battery does get drained out quickly. The discharging of the phone though does not cause much problem as the phone supports 27W fast charging and within an hour you almost get the phone completely charged up.

Conclusion

Have you ever tried a gaming phone? Are you a hardcore gamer who does not want any compromises and disturbances while gaming? Black Shark 2 is an ideal smartphone for you. Having best of processor available and amazing refresh rate makes it a desirable package for gamers to spend around 40K. I watched entire second season of Sacred Games on Black Shark 2 and this is where you notice the effects of 240Hz touch sensing. Cameras are well optimised for colour temperature and balanced exposure. Battery is long but, could have been better for a gaming smartphone. The 27W charger is just awesome to fill it up entirely in 35-40 minutes. At times, you’ll miss 3.5mm jack and expandable memory slot in Black Shark 2. It reminds of Google Pixel 3 XL on the outset but, when you deep dive into it, it’s purely a gaming beast. Game on! ■

haider@mymobile.co.in