The new era of mobile gaming is being kickstarted by the just-announced gaming smartphone Xiaomi Black Shark 3. The live stream from the presentation wrapped up only a little while ago, and the feeling of having a new gaming king is still lingering with us.
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The manufacturer unveiled two versions of the new device right away—Black Shark 3 and Black Shark 3 Pro—differing mainly in display size, battery, and other specifications.
Symmetrical design of the back
The newcomer brings a great, redesigned look that immediately places the smartphone in the Black Shark gaming lineup. That’s suggested by the typical black/gray/green color scheme, but also by the X-shaped curves of the back cover and the large green logo in the middle shaped like a big S.
The front of the third-generation Black Shark is dominated by a large display with narrow side bezels and a very slim forehead and chin. At the top above the display there’s a thin opening for the speaker and the front camera lens.
Along the edges of the smartphone, you’ll find all the physical buttons and ports. Let’s start at the bottom, where there’s a USB Type-C port and speaker perforation. This is also at the top, together with a port for the 3,5 mm audio jack.
On the right side frame, embedded in the upper and lower parts, are two physical multifunction buttons. Each of them is 21 mm long and, when needed, the user can slide them out above the edge surface up to a height of 1,5 mm. This hitherto unheard-of mechanism brings the smartphone closer to handheld gaming consoles. However, this feature is included only in the Black Shark 3 Pro version.
Below the buttons there’s a special mechanical system that enhances the gaming experience. You can map them to all kinds of functions in the JoyUI gaming interface—but we’ll get to that later.
As we already mentioned, the back of the smartphone is typically Black Shark—but despite that, it’s innovative. A standout design element is a backlit logo with the letter S, plus two triangular module areas.
They protrude from the back cover and are positioned opposite each other, and together with the lines of the back cover they form the letter X – characteristic of the Black Shark series.
In the top triangular module, three camera sensors are placed in an unusual way. In the lower one, there’s a magnetic charging connector that ensures a comfortable grip of the gaming device even while charging.
Even though Black Shark 3 is a robust and fairly heavy smartphone, the manufacturer tried to adapt its design for a comfortable grip during gaming. After all, gaming is the priority for the Black Shark series, and the whole device has been built around that.
Display with 270 Hz touch response
The display on Black Shark 3 is a chapter of its own and comes with specs we haven’t seen in a mobile phone before. It’s a 6.67-inch AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2400 x 1080. The display’s refresh rate itself reaches 90 Hz.
Specifically, the new Black Shark display will be able to recognize our fingers at up to 270 Hz. That means it can evaluate up to 270 touch inputs on the touch surface in just one second.
On top of that, it offers minimal latency—24 ms for a single touch and 28 ms for multi-touch, meaning multiple fingers at the same time. With Black Shark 3, the player will therefore have a significant speed and accuracy advantage in any multiplayer mode over a player on another device.
It also supports the technology HDR10+ as well as the DCI-P3 color gamut, and it doesn’t miss out on TÜV Rheinland certification. The display also boasts very accurate color rendering and reaches values of JNCD <0.55 and Delta E <1.
In reality, this means the display colors get as close as possible to the true colors you see with the human eye. There’s also an intelligent TrueView color temperature adjustment based on the surrounding environment.
The MEMC 2.0 technology dynamically inserts content with a low frame count into a high refresh rate to deliver true 90 Hz.
Massive gaming performance
Even before the presentation, we knew that in terms of performance the Black Shark 3 would bring the latest—and most powerful—components. We’ve discussed them recently during the launch of the Xiaomi Mi 10. Today, the Snapdragon 865 processor was confirmed, ensuring high performance as well as 5G support. Thanks to this, the smartphone is the first gaming smartphone with both SA and NSA 5G mobile network support.
As we already know, a powerful smartphone would be an unnecessarily overbuilt “bright flame” in the chain without additional powerful and fast components. The Black Shark 3 therefore got the newest LPDDR5 RAM module and fast UFS 3.0 storage. At launch, it will be available with 8 GB RAM, while more powerful models will get 12 GB RAM.
Black Shark 3 literally requires extremely active cooling—which the manufacturer managed to integrate. The smartphone is equipped with a completely new liquid-based cooling system that’s applied on both sides of the motherboard. Because of this, it earned the “sandwich” nickname, and the device’s cooling is far more efficient than ever before.
For even more efficient cooling for real gamers, Xiaomi introduced an extra fan specifically tuned for the Black Shark model. It can cool the smartphone by another 14°C in just one minute. Essentially, it’s the “Pro” version of the fan that was presented for Mi 10.
Without tuned software optimizations, it wouldn’t work on these devices. Black Shark 3 runs on a special JoyUI overlay with many gaming improvements. The phone is equipped with a gaming engine, SolarCore 2.0, which makes games load faster, complex scenes run more smoothly, and uses the least power possible to achieve the best in-game results.
Dual battery and properly fast charging
The gaming Black Shark 3 also features an interesting split battery, and its maximum capacity is 4 720 mAh. It’s not extremely high, but thanks to the magnetic charging connector and fast charging power up to 65 W, it should be more than enough.
The manufacturer states that dual batteries fully charge to 100% in just 38 minutes. There’s also special 18 W magnetic charging via a connector on the back. With this charging method, the user won’t be disturbed by a charging cable.
Not much was said about the 64 MPx camera
As we described in the introduction, the new Black Shark features a trio of rear camera sensors arranged in an unusual triangle. Let’s be honest—photography isn’t the primary feature of a gaming smartphone, but even so, the new gaming shark doesn’t fall behind.
The setup includes a main 64 MPx sensor, a 13 MPx wide-angle sensor with a 120° field of view, and a 5 MPx sensor for portrait photos. The camera can capture RAW photos and includes artificial intelligence.
More equipment
The Snapdragon 865 also signals WiFi 6 as the standard for wireless communication. The latest 802.11ax network can reach a maximum transfer speed of up to 9.6 Gbps. That’s 2.7× faster than WiFi 5 – 802.11ac, introduced in 2012, and 16× faster than WiFi 4 – 802.11n from 2009.
Black Shark 3 Pro is even better
The manufacturer also brings the Black Shark 3 Pro model, which got a larger 7.1-inch 90 Hz AMOLED display, with resolution also increased to impressive 3120 x 1440 pixels, which is 2K.
The display has all the other specifications matching the model without the Pro label, but it also supports 10‑bit color depth, allowing it to show an incredible 1,07 billion colors.
The most noticeable difference between the Pro and the standard version of the new Black Shark is the physical sliding buttons—available only on the Pro model.
Of course, the manufacturer also planned for higher power draw, and the Pro version comes with a 5,000 mAh battery. You also get the same 65 W charging, which charges the battery from 0 to 100% in 38 minutes.
The Pro model also features improved dual 1217 ultra-linear stereo speakers, delivering near-perfect sound for gaming. The highlight is a horizontal linear vibration motor specifically tuned for games. It includes 150+ types of basic vibration effects for different scenes, bringing you an even more immersive experience.
The prices pleasantly surprised us.
To top it off, there are the prices. For the Black Shark 3, the prices pleasantly surprised us, and even the base versions start at even lower amounts than Xiaomi Mi 10. That’s most likely because of the weaker cameras, but overall performance is similar—if not better.
Here are the prices of the new arrivals for the Chinese market:
Black Shark 3 with 8 GB RAM + 128 GB storage for 3499 yuan = ~450 € / 11 500 CZK
Black Shark 3 with 12 GB RAM + 128 GB storage for 3799 yuan = ~489 € / 12 500 CZK
Black Shark 3 with 12 GB RAM + 256 GB storage for 3999 yuan = ~515 € / 13 145 CZK
Black Shark 3 Pro with 8 GB RAM + 256 GB storage for 4699 yuan = ~605 € / 15 500 CZK
Black Shark 3 Pro with 12 GB RAM + 256 GB storage for 4999 yuan = ~645 € / 16 500 CZK
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