by You know the drill by now. A new gaming phone gets announced, it has trigger buttons, some sort of cooling tech, sub-par cameras, and a hulking chassis that makes for an unwieldy daily driver. The Black Shark 5 Pro borrows some of the formula, but it feels more refined with the triggers, sports a 108MP camera and packs a working cooling system. It is a lot of functionality, and I must say I’m rather impressed after having gamed on this smartphone for three days.
One awesome piece of hardware after another
Aside from the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, the smartphone has a lot of things in its favour. For starters, it sports a stellar OLED display that has a 144Hz refresh rate and 720Hz touch-sampling rate. Second btn trigger brings something new on top of pop-up btn.
The Black Shark 5 Pro has two pretty snappy magnetic pop-up triggers. When not needed, you can make them disappear, courtesy of the hardware toggles located just next to the two trigger buttons.
I had the left trigger set to shoot and the right trigger set to aim while playing Battlegrounds Mobile India, a rebranded version of PUBG. Because of that, my screen space opened up as well that I would see when attempting to shoot the enemies. It was the same with Asphalt 9. I mapped the left trigger to drift, and the right one to boost. Having the entire screen for my eyes to gaze at with no interruption of two fat thumbs made the gaming experience more pleasurable.
The ROG Phone 5 goes with the same functionality but has its trigger buttons flushed to the sides. In contrast, the two magnetic pop-up triggers on the Black Shark 5 Pro can be activated to pop out from the sides — making for a much more natural experience. And when you’re ready to use the Black Shark 5 Pro like a regular smartphone, you can disable them and quickly conceal them on the right edge.
You can pack all the gaming features you want in a smartphone but it wouldn’t matter at all if the display looks ugly. Thankfully, this is an area that the Black Shark 5 Pro shines. It boasts a 6.67-inch OLED display with 10-bit color depth and 1080 x 2400 resolution. Translation: It’s a really crisp display to behold.
You can select from three other refresh rates besides 144Hz — including 120Hz, 90Hz, and 60Hz — to meet your needs. It’s also pressure-sensitive, enabling easy precision movements. The company calls this Magic Press, and it’s mappable so you can customize it to your liking. Another addition that makes the display feel as responsive as it can is the low touch delay of 8.3 milliseconds.
The Black Shark 5 Pro stayed under 40°C even after long gaming sessions. I could feel it getting warm, sure, but nothing to fret over with the new liquid cooling system. The storage is of the 128GB or 256GB variety and you can choose between 8GB, 12GB and 16GB of RAM. I also took my place behind the dual-symmetrical linear stereo speakers, which are designed to deliver an intuitive gaming experience.
Gaming software that’s useful This Year.
JoyUI 13 sits on top of MIUI 12 on the Black Shark 5 Pro, which is on Android 11. It’s unfortunate that the device doesn’t come preloaded with the latest stable version of Android. In my limited time, the phone didn’t slow down; I didn’t have any hiccups with the interface. And while that old software is a shame, Shark Space 4.0’s suite of gaming features certainly help make up for it.
At any time, you can open the Shark Space by holding both shoulder trigger buttons simultaneously. Update (via MacRumors): No major changes at this moment except some minor updates on the software side of things—adjusts the master touch, network status, performance, do not disturb, and other settings.
When using the hunted mobile India for the first time, the device would already tell me to slide down from the top-right corner to open the Shark Space. Then it let me assign functions to the two trigger buttons using Master Control. When you’re using Master Control, the game stops so you don’t overlook pivotal events.
Also included are Game Macros that specialize for different scenes of the game program macro, one-key execution for repetitive action. I also was a fan of motion sensing, which allows you to control the game with the actual motion and movement of your smartphone. The total number of gestures you can perform is up to six, actually: turning to the left or right, leaning there, and flipping forward or backward.
You have a ton of other settings too, such as Game Studio Setting (which allows you to customize performance, display, touch, and audio settings), Ludicrous Mode (for extreme performance) and more. With feature-rich gaming software, the Black Shark 5 Pro could be one of the best gaming smartphones.
Non-gaming goodness
While the processor, display, and software are the key specs that you’ll want to pay attention to, they aren’t the only aspects of the Black Shark 5 Pro. Now starting with the cameras the Black Shark 5 Pro comes with a 108MP primary camera which I wasn’t able to test in a million degrees of draining Delhi heat wave. Alongside this, there’s a 13MP ultrawide-angle camera and a 5MP macro lens. The smartphone can shoot 4K videos at 60 frames per second (fps) and a 1080p slow-mo at 120fps, 240fps, and 960fps. A 16MP selfie shooter is on the front.
The Black Shark 5 Pro has a 4,650mAh battery with support for 120-watt charging. For me it went from 10% to 100% in under 20 mins. On one side, there are only a few light threads arranged on the right side of the camera module, which will provide mirage light effects. In the settings you can map it to various lights.
Black Shark 5 Pro price and availabilityBlack Shark 5 Pro specifications
Pricing & Availability: The Black Shark 5 Pro starts at $799 for the 8GB RAM and 128GB storage base model. It starts at 8GB of RAM and 128GB storage for $699, goes up to 16GB of RAM and 256GB storage for $999, with a 12GB of RAM and 256GB model in the middle for $899. The Snapdragon 870-powered vanilla Black Shark 5 costs $549 for the version with the same RAM and storage.
We haven’t had enough time with the Black Shark 5 Pro to run it through our regular review process, but it’s clear there are some very strong elements here for a solid gaming phone. The capable chipset, excellent display, and gaming-focused software all make it clear that Black Shark knows exactly who its target audience is. If you’re interested, the Black Shark 5 Pro is now available from Black Sharks’ website and on Amazon.
