A few months ago, Xiaomi announced the Black Shark gaming smartphone. Now, the next model in the series, the Black Shark Helo, is being released.
The next-gen Black Shark Helo comes with a few minor hardware changes, but still offers its sleek “gamer” look. Following in Asus’ footsteps, Xiaomi has added customizable LED strips on the sides of the phone.
Like its predecessor, the Helo features a Snapdragon 845 processor with vapor chamber cooling, storage options from 128GB to 256GB, and a 4,000mAh battery, which supports many hours of gaming.
It has a customizable luminescent logo on the back, along with a fingerprint sensor and dual cameras – 12MP + 20MP, arranged vertically. On the front, it has a 20MP selfie camera.
The most attractive upgrade, however, is the RAM, which has been bumped up to 10GB from the previous version's 6-8GB. Xiaomi has ditched the LCD display for a significant upgrade, with a 6-inch 1080p OLED display on the Black Shark Helo.
The move to OLED will bring better blacks and power savings when viewing dark content or using dark themes. The device has front-facing speakers, no headphone jack and no hardware key to activate performance mode.
The Black Shark Helo also comes with two gamepad controllers, which can be attached to a special phone case (making it look like a Nintendo Switch).
The base Helo model, which has 6GB of RAM, costs around $460 (3,199 yuan). You'll need to spend around $600 (4,199 yuan) for the 10GB version. And of course, you can only buy it in China!
