Gaming-first smartphones may not have been taken seriously at first, but somewhere mixed between the hardware-first approach, additional gaming controls, high refresh rate displays, and a killer price tag, they've become very popular. Last year's Black Shark 4 sticks to the same sort of formula, and now it's available for purchase "globally" in the US and Canada, as well as the UK and much of Europe.
If you missed the original announcement in March of last year, the Black Shark 4 Pro is powered by 2021's Snapdragon 888 chipset with 8-12GB of RAM and 128-256GB of storage, depending on which version you buy. To complete the gaming-first spec sheet, it has a 144Hz 1080p 6.67" OLED display, with a 4500mAh battery that tops up at a stunning 120W.
Gaming phones don't always have the best cameras in practice — understandable, given their focus — but the Black Shark 4 Pro has a 64MP f/1.79 primary, an 8 MP f/2.2 119° ultra-wide, and one of those 5MP macro cameras that are usually vestigial. US customers should note that this has support for 5G bands N1/N3/N8/N28a/N41/N77/N78/N79, and it's dual-SIM too.
One of the things that usually sets gaming phones apart from "normal" phones is extra hardware controls. Often it's just a set of capacitive buttons, but the Black Shark 4 Pro has physical triggers with a magnetic pop-up action, purported to offer a more tactile experience. Outside of gaming, you can assign them other functions as well.
The Black Shark 4 Pro also has symmetrical dual speakers that are DTS Ultra X certified, which the company claims offer an enhanced sound experience thanks to a bigger sound chamber, and it still has a headphone jack.
The Black Shark 4 Pro also has "two liquid cooling internal components" that claim to keep the phone running up to 30% cooler than the prior model. There's also a clip-on cooling system if your mobile gaming sessions get particularly intense. And, of course, it's running Android: MIUI 12.5.
Interested parties can pick up the phone starting today at $579, with the 12GB/256GB version running $679, available in Shadow Black, Misty Grey, and Cosmos Black. It may have landed here a year after it launched in China with 2021-era hardware, but it's beating competitors like the RedMagic 7 we recently reviewed on price — though it has more recent hardware inside it.