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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s.yu - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
No I checked and only the top tier is available in the US, which explains the price there.Though I haven't been keeping track of the base tier price elsewhere.
Tams80 - Thursday, September 26, 2019 - link
The ROG Phone II at least has a lot more going for it. It has specs that are actually nice to have outside of gaming. A bit like a top-end PC build that isn't all 'gaming' flash and you can enjoy your films in HDR on, FLAC files on, edit videos on, etc.masteiffy - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
Hello Andrei, when are we getting the new iPhone reviews, I’ve been waiting for the review to decide which to buy. Thanks!Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
Next week.imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
I don't think i know anyone who games on a phone outside of simple games that don't require anything but a low end smartphone. We don't need gaming phones.StormyParis - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
You're old ;-p and not old enough to have (pre-)teen kids !PeachNCream - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
Playing video games is more than just parking it at a desk behind a 1990's-style box. At least 50% of my gaming is now on a phone and some of the highest grossing titles are mobile ones.Wardrive86 - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
There is a lot of really high end games on android now (Shadowgun, Ark, PUBG, CoD) high end emulation (Dolphin @1080p+, Citra) To each their own though, personally I do 100% of my gaming on a phone.s.yu - Thursday, September 26, 2019 - link
Sometimes gaming on a phone is fine, but sometimes ports don't work as intended, for example some achievements of RPGs become near impossible on a touchscreen as opposed to a keyboard.PeachNCream - Thursday, September 26, 2019 - link
I don't think the attainment of an achievement would move the bar at all on what platform I use to play a game. Those things never really struck me as very important so I admit that I'm surprised someone would even mention them as a factor that influences their decision.