Gadgetory

this episode is sponsored by Nord VPN it's 2018 if you're not using a VPN and a good VPN you're doing the internet wrong visit the link in the description you need Nord VPN I've been using it for like five years so I made a video about this phone a really long time ago at the beginning of the gaming smartphone trend smartphones designed specifically for gamers with gamer features LEDs special colors aggressive styling so I made a video about this is called the Black Shark it was one of the first ones that came to my attention but at the time wasn't available for me to get a hands-on with I have it in front of me now they finally sent it ok so this is it wooo yes very aggressive very gamer if the whole thing is a metal body grippy as well this has a rubberized kind of grip to it on top of the metallic finish I kind of don't mind the design yes it's gamer ish but not too over the top oh the game controller is in here a case so it leaves the back open and improvement in cooling I'm guessing that's interesting so it doesn't change the look of the device very much it's it's sort of like a bumper that's the controller so you get a joystick shoulder buttons tons of grip it looks like it charges over USB type-c oh good call will case first then look at Willy do over there huh just so I have this the right way Willard is going this probably like that oh yeah that locked that's a nice looking little gaming device definitely better than just the phone on its own now you still have access to your cameras on the back as well as all your other switches no headphone jack type c2 mini jack it feels very high quality no plastic in sight the whole thing is metal the fingerprint scanner because it's not on the back is on the front here it's a Snapdragon 805 eight gigs of ram four thousand milliamp hour battery it's kind of like a polka phone but gaming 12 plus 20 megapixel camera setup there on the back front-facing camera here is 20 megapixels so we have a dual SIM card tray oh it's already set up and has pubsey already on it comes in either 128 gigs of storage or 64 starting around 480 bucks us another thing I'm noticing is the skin looks pretty stock on here very stock oh my goodness very stock you can probably tell immediately the bezels here are not very small by today's standards you got a big forehead a big chin in the unit that ships to you may have some version some sort of a skin on it so just be aware of that so the display is 1080 by 2160 you have audio coming firing out of the bottom as well as the earpiece region well done Jesse James on that one but also the speakers on this are nice and crisp delete I feel like I should just pop that song up on my polka phone cuz it can't it definitely doesn't sound that good they thought about the audio there is some audio kicking out of this of course they had to think about it though how are you gonna call it a gaming phone and not think about the audio Oh Dave two DS about to be mad whoo first impressions with the thumbstick very responsive and way better than grabbing onto the screen for sure so they've mapped it right out of the gate and you just connect via bluetooth to controller and you're pretty much up and running it is as advertised it feels more like a controller obviously that's what we're going for right so yes this is cool I'm a fan of this it's not gonna immediately make you a pro star gamer obviously but if you are interested in extended gaming sessions on a smartphone this is just gonna make it so much comfier this has one of those vapor cooling situations to keep the chipset cool while you're pressing it like you would via a video game so this key on the side it's called the shark key and when you click it and say you have toggled the shark key to close all current applications and enter shark mode oh man uninterrupted gaming no notifications no incoming calls featuring intelligent frequency and voltage regulation and RAM cleanup it just freed up some of my ram specifically for the purpose of greater gaming performance that's cool you can also see how much time you're spending playing games you have some statistics available to you and then to go back to standard phone mode you just switch the key back and you go straight in you've got a camera set up here it looks very similar to what I've been working with on the polka phone which is of course also a Xiaomi product pretty nice image not bad you already know I'm not a big fan of these portrait modes but nonetheless that's how it works you can see the focus fall off far more drastic than what the lens is capable of creating on its own it's acceptable it's not the main focus of his phone it's a special type of phone for a particular type of enthusiast if your smartphone is your main gaming device you're gonna start looking at devices like this which are tuned up for that purpose and of course in this case even a special interface nonetheless there it is the black shark the first of many gaming specific smartphones that I'm sure we're gonna see as manufacturers continue to attempt to differentiate their devices for different users for different use case scenarios and specifically the gaming market because it has become such a prominent place for gamers there are so many new users especially in emerging markets where this will be their de facto standard possibly only gaming device and so it's cool to see these different implementations of how you can be gaming on a smartphone this is one of the best I've experienced