As I mentioned before, if you’re familiar with the previous Black Shark Helo, then the Black Shark 2 will immediately look pretty familiar. It’s got a pretty neat design on its back, which is easily where the phone looks its best. And the Black Shark logo is slap bang in the middle, grabbing most of the attention. The RBG lighting support for it allows you to have a variety of lighting effects coming from it, kind of like the Chroma lighting on the Razer Phone 2.
The area that sitting in between the middle piece and the edges of Black Shark 2 is made out of glass, and it is quite a sight when you have it under strong lighting. Unfortunately, the phone still has camera bumps though. Despite the contours on the phone, it’s actually a pretty thin device. It’s also pretty light too; in fact, quite a bit lighter than I thought it would be. At the bottom of the Black Shark 2, we see the sole port on the phone – the USB-C port. In case you need a confirmation, nope, this phone doesn’t come with a 3.5mm audio jack.
On the front, we see that the Black Shark 2 has managed to get very thin bezels on the two sides of its display. Some might be relieved to see that there is not notch on this particular phone. At the center of the top bezel are the phone’s earpiece and speaker combo. You’ll find another grille looking just like this at the opposite side, and this is because the Black Shark 2 comes with stereo speakers.
If you’ve noticed that you haven’t seen the fingerprint sensor anywhere, that’s because it’s built into the display itself. The display also apparently sports a 240Hz touch sampling rate. While we know that this means faster registration of commands when you input them onto the touch screen, I wasn’t able to test it out properly given the time constraints. On the right side of the phone, you’ll see that the power button is accompanied by a sliding switch. This switch activates the signature software of the Black Shark 2 which is called the Shark Space. It essentially blocks nearly all other functionality of the phone, and provides a PC launcher-like interface where you can browse through the games you have installed.
Going on the opposite side, you’ll find the usual volume rocker. But one more thing to notice on both sides are strips of RGB lighting. Black Shark representatives tell us that these only light up when the Black Shark 2 is charging, playing games or videos. This is unlike the Black Shark Logo on the back, which lights up in more scenarios. The camera on the Black Shark 2 is also pretty good, at least from my limited tests within the event floor. Colours seemed pretty accurate, which is nice to have considering a number of phone manufacturers like their cameras producing bright and vivid images. Detail preservation looked good too, and there are plenty of different modes at your disposal.
But there’s only so much to be told about the Black Shark 2 in such a short amount of time. With features like Snapdragon 855 processor, 12GB of RAM, and 240Hz touch sampling rate, it will be interesting to see if Black Shark 2 able to propel itself into the forefront of the gaming phone segment.
