An unknown Xiaomi smartphone was recently leaked, and looks to offer impressive performance, sparking speculation about the company’s plans. Here’s everything we know about the Xiaomi Blackshark smartphone, including a possible release date, pricing and leaked specs.
While Xiaomi isn’t short on exciting hardware with the announcement of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S and the Mi Gaming laptop at a March 2018 event, the company is also rumoured to be taking on the Razer Phone with a high-end, gaming-focused smartphone of its own creation.
An unknown Xiaomi smartphone has been spotted in Geekbench with the designation “Blackshark SKR-A0” with some impressive performance, sparking speculation about the company’s future plans.
When will the Xiaomi Blackshark be announced? Will I be able to buy it in the UK? Here’s everything we know about the Xiaomi Blackshark smartphone, including a possible release date, pricing and leaked specs.
So, when should we expect to see the mysterious gaming-focused Xiaomi Blackshark be announced and released in the UK? First of all, we can’t imagine it happening in the next couple of months as Xiaomi announced its 2018 flagship in March, and the company wouldn’t want to overshadow it with the announcement of a brand-new smartphone.
With that being said, we imagine it’ll be released around September or October 2018, around the time of the next-generation iPhones and when the second-generation Razer Phone is expected to be released (the first-gen device was announced on 1 November 2017). We imagine that given the leaked spec, the Xiaomi Blackshark will be a direct competitor to Razer’s 144Hz display-enabled smartphone.
Even if that is the case, it’s not a guarantee that the Xiaomi Blackshark would make its way to the UK officially and become available on contract. Like with most other Xiaomi smartphones, you’ll have to import it from China using websites like GearBest.
If that’s too long to wait, take a look at our roundup of the best smartphones of 2018 – they’re all available to buy right now!
Once the Xiaomi Blackshark is announced, how much should we expect to pay for it in the UK? While there’s no official price, we can take clues from Xiaomi’s recent approach to gaming laptops. The company announced the Mi Gaming Laptop, a powerful competitor to Alienware’s gaming-focused laptops at a much cheaper price-point.
We imagine that this would also be the case with the smartphone, as to make it an attractive enough option when up against reputable Western-based brands. It’ll feature a competitive price when compared to high-end flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S9, iPhone X and Huawei P20 Pro, and will be similar in price to the Razer Phone that can be picked up SIM-free for around £520.
With that being said, we imagine that the Xiaomi Blackshark will cost around £450-550 in the UK if it ever becomes available.
Following leaks from both Geekbench and AnTuTu, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what the Xiaomi Blackshark will allegedly feature. First of all, a recent Geekbench benchmark result seems to detail an unannounced phone designated the Xiaomi “Blackshark SKR-A0”. Per the results, which can be seen below, the smartphone will feature a Snapdragon 845 chipset coupled with a whopping 8GB of RAM.
What’s most intriguing about the leak is that the Geekbench results are impressively high, even for Qualcomm’s latest chipset. Inside sources claim that this is due to a new “aviation-class” cooling system built into the smartphone that is said to keep the GPU and CPU from thermal-throttling and inevitably slowing down when under strain.
That is one of several leaks that suggests that the Blackshark is a gaming-focused smartphone for high-end users, rather than a daily driver that anybody can use to browse Facebook and tweet.
It’s not the only source of information about the rumoured Xiaomi Blackshark either; following the leak on Geekbench, an AnTuTu listing was spotted that seemingly reveals other details about the Xiaomi Blackshark.
Per the report, the Xiaomi Blackshark is said to offer a 2160 x 1080 display, alongside an Adreno 630 GPU, 32GB of built-in storage and the same 8GB of RAM and Snapdragon 845 mentioned in the Geekbench report. It’s also rumoured to be running Google’s latest mobile OS, Android 8.0.
The reason for a lower resolution display than the Razer Phone might be due to battery life and performance. With fewer pixels to power, the Xiaomi may be able to offer an edge in processing power and battery life when compared to the Razer Phone.
