The Black Shark 2 Review: A Gaming Phone's Existential Crisis
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 25, 2019 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Xiaomi
- Snapdragon 855
- Black Shark 2
Battery Life
The Black Shark 2 comes with a 3900/4000mAh battery, and given we’re not seeing any other particularly power hungry components in the phone, we should be expecting the phone to perform relatively well in terms of its battery life.
In the Web Browsing test, indeed we see the BS2 last quite long at 11.83h – among the better devices out there in the market and the second-best Snapdragon 855 device behind the Galaxy S10+. Samsung here still has an advantage due to a more efficient screen, even though it’s also higher resolution.
In PCMark, the BS2 also does quite well. The better efficiency here can be explained by the fact that the phone is slightly more conservatively tuned in terms of its performance, using the more efficient performance states more than more aggressively tuned phones.
Overall, battery life of the Black Shark 2 is very good and lands exactly where you’d expect it to.
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eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
Thanks Andrei, also and especially for calling a (now major) manufacturer -Xiaomi- out for having benchmark cheating built into their software! The hardware side is just as bad - why all style, no substance? The aluminum case almost screams for use as a heat sink, especially now that phones are all closed up.Regarding gaming phones: will you have a chance to test the ASUS ROG2? Might tell us if all these "gaming" phones are all smoke and mirrors. The ROG 2 is even more expensive, so it'd better be spectacular.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
We'll have a ROG2 review out next week.s.yu - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
Andrei, please be sure to dig into Mate30P's slo-mo with detail, now that the 1-to-4 frame interpolation is confirmed, I'm not the only one suspecting that the 720P is also interpolated from an inferior readout that skips even more lines!isthisavailable - Thursday, September 26, 2019 - link
The Rog phone 2's size and weight look huge. Can you please include it's everyday usability in your review? I'm tempted to buy but 77cm wide and 9mm thicc phone looks a bit too much. And 240g weight!brucethemoose - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
I can tell you the Razer Phone 2 is the real deal. Performance is fine, but holy heck, the screen! Im not even a phone gamer, but 120hz is like night and day, and you couldn't pay me to go back to a phone with a 60hz display.s.yu - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
What do you think of 240Hz then? A phone with that was just released by Sharp.Mediocre phone by other metrics though.
brucethemoose - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
Its probably pretty similar, as Razer uses the same Sharp LCD line those Aquos phones use.But on 120hz vs 240hz specifically... I don't know? I've never even laid eyes on 240hz anything. I'd guess that you need more tightly integrated VRR support from base Android and something faster than an LCD to really make use of it, but what do I know?
Also, for a $400 phone, the RP2 is suprisingly good by other metrics. Its not perfect (no 3.5mm, no OLED, 845 instead of 855), but I don't feel like I traded much off to get 120hz.
hemedans - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
RoG 2 is around $500 base model with 128GB/8GB memory, probably best Gaming phone for now, waiting for Review too.s.yu - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
I thought that was the Chinese "Tencent special edition" price, yet I checked and at least India gets the same price...it seems US customers get ripped off...or is only the top tier available there?$500 sounds good but 128GB really doesn't last.
Tams80 - Thursday, September 26, 2019 - link
Well, the Tencent thing is a deal between ASUS and Tencent (I'm guessing mainly subsidised by Tencent). I'm guessing India is a mix of a deal with some company and lower variation due to India having lower household incomes.