Born To Game, Black Shark Gaming Phone with Xiaomi Investments Releasing in 1 Week

Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, confirmed through Weibo that Xiaomi has invested in Black Shark, a gaming phone brand. At the same time, Sun Changxu, chairman of the Black Shark Mobile Supervisory Board and partner at the Xiaomi Industrial Investment Department, posted a picture of his invitation to the Black Shark gaming phone launch event on Weibo. The launch of the Black Shark phone will officially take place at the 798 art district in Beijing at 3 p.m. on April 13th, and its slogan is “Born to Game”.

Leijun‘s Weibo

Ads for the Black Shark gaming phone has already appeared online. It has two joysticks, a cross key, a shoulder button and several other buttons on the front. Real photos of the phone has also surfaced, looking exactly the same as the ads online. It could easily have been mistaken for a gaming console had people not known that it is a phone.

Invitation to the Black Shark gaming phone launch event

The Black Shark gaming phone usese the Snapdragon 845 processor, and comes in three different RAM and storage combinations: 6GB +128GB, 8GB +128GB and 8GB+256GB. It uses the QC3.0 quick charger (same as Xiaomi MIX 2S) and pre-installed Android 8.0 system.

In February 2018, the existence of Black Shark Technology Co., Ltd. was reported and news of the Black Shark gaming phone also surfaced. According a technology reporter from China.com.cn, the Black Shark team consists of about 300 people, covering the entire process from production, research, to supply and sales.

Xiaomi has been trying to penetrate the market of mobile games for years. At the 2015 Annual Gaming Conference, Lei Jun suggested that although Xiaomi is not a gaming company, it can provide distribution and channels for the development of games, and participate in the investment and joint R&D in the gaming industry. These moves laid a solid foundation for creating a sound mobile gaming ecosystem. According to Xiaomi, Black Shark is the new brand it has invested in and Xiaomi plans to go further into the field of gaming phones in the future.

With each iteration of the mobile phone, most top-selling products in the market are becoming more and more similar in their appearance and design. Gaming phones are destined to be niche products, but their birth will definitely infuse new energy into the entire phone market.

This article originally appeared in ithome and was translated by Pandaily.