What you need to know
- Black Shark 3 and Black Shark 3 Pro are launching officially in Europe.
- Available to order from May 8 on Black Shark's own store.
- Coming to Amazon in UK, France and Spain from May 18.
Having been revealed in Asia earlier this year, Black Shark is bringing its latest gaming smartphones, the Black Shark 3 and Black Shark 3 Pro to Europe officially. Available to order from Black Shark's own store from May 8, prices start at a pretty reasonable £539 for the regular model and there's a ton of interesting features.
The first is the mechanical triggers available on the Black Shark 3 Pro. These are a part of what Black Shark calls the "Master Control" system, and they pop up out of the phone automatically when you're playing a game. When you're done, they go back into the frame, and what's neat is that if you drop the phone they'll retract automatically so they don't snap off as they crash into the ground. One of the main differences between the Black Shark 3 and the Pro model is that the regular phone doesn't have these triggers.
The triggers boast a console like feeling, and they're rated to pop up 300,000 times and be pressed 1 million times, so durability should be pretty good. The other two aspects to Master Control are the 270Hz touch reporting which leads to a rapid 24ms touch latency, and an increase to four pressure sensors compared to its predecessors which cover 48% more of the surface area of the phone.
Oh and they added an X-axis motor for more precise force feedback when gaming. Apparently you can feel the difference between weapons in a game like CoD Mobile or PUBG Mobile, so we're looking forward to checking that out.
What about the rest of the hardware, though? It's as you might expect, pretty high-end. Inside you find a Snapdragon 865 paired with 8 or 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and either 128 or 256GB of storage, with UFS 3.0 on hand for maximum performance. Inside the Black Shark 3 utilises a nifty dual-battery solution that provides a total capacity of 5,000mAh. Thanks to its support of both parallel and series operation, the battery can charge quickly as well as provide long life.
Black Shark claims a 50% charge is possible in just 12 minutes, with a full charge taking just 38 minutes using the included 65W charger.
DIsplay wise there's a 90Hz AMOLED panel on both versions of the phone. The Black Shark 3 is the smaller of the two with a 6.67-inch Full HD display, while the Pro steps up to a whopping 7.1-inch 3120x1440 resolution and support for HDR10+. On the camera front, the Black Shark 3 phones are well equipped, on paper at least, with a triple setup of 64MP, 5MP and 12MP sensors, including an ultra-wide angle.
The Black Shark 3 launches with JOYUI 11 which is based on Android 10 and has a bunch of gamer-focused customizations, including the latest iteration of the Shark Space. Other interesting features include an optional magnetic charging cable that attaches to the back of the phone so you can game without a charging cable in the way of your hands, a gamepad accessory and a new set of Bluetooth earbuds.
The Black Shark 3 starts at £539 for the 128GB/8GB combination while the Black Shark 3 Pro will retail for £799 in a 256GB/12GB form. Two colors are available, Blasting Black and Knight Grey, and both phones can be ordered right now from Black Shark's European store. In addition, from May 18 the phones will be available in the UK, France and Spain through Amazon.
Another big hitting gaming phone comes to Europe
Packed with hardware and interesting features, the Black Shark 3 is now officially available to gamers in Europe.
