Black Shark 4 Unboxing and First Impressions

Here are unboxing and first impressions of the upcoming Black Shark 4 with Snapdragon 870 and Magnetic Pop-up Triggers for the Philippine market.

Black Shark 4

Introduced globally in late March 2021, the Black Shark 4 was recently teased to arrive in the Philippines soon. In a recent post on its official Facebook page, Black Shark Philippines revealed that the Black Shark 4 will arrive locally and will be up for pre-order on April 28, 2021, at its official Shopee Store.

The new Black Shark 4 comes with a 6.67-inch FHD+ display with 144Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ certification, and 500 nits typical brightness. Inside is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 octa-core processor, Adreno 650 GPU, LPDDR4 RAM, UFS 3.1, and 4,500mAh battery with 120W fast charging.

As of the time of this article's writing, the Philippine market price for the Black Shark 4 has yet to be revealed. 

Let's dive in!

Unboxing/Accessories

Box inclusions

The Black Shark 4 comes in a dark blue box with bright neon green accents with aggressive gaming-themed lines. 

Inside the box are the Black Shark 4, 120W wall charger, USB Type-A to Type-C cable, bumper case, holographic stickers, SIM ejector tool, and documentation.

Build Quality/Design

Back design

The Black Shark 4 is made up of a combination of glass, metal, and glasstic. The display is covered by a glass panel while the back is made of a glasstic material. Both are slippery and are fingerprint-smudge-magnet. In between the two are the solid and polished metal frame with sharp-angled chamfering.

Good craftsmanship despite glasstic back!

Because of the curved back panel and the solid metal frame, the phone is easy to hold. It measures 163.83 x 76.35 x 10.42 mm and weighs 210 grams.

Front display with punch hole

In front is a large 6.67-inch AMOLED display with a 20:9 aspect ratio, 2400 x 1080 resolution, and 105 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. On the top part of the display is the single punch hole that houses the selfie camera. On top of it a thin slit where the small earpiece is.

Top and bottom side

At the top of the phone are the antenna lines, speaker grills, microphone port, and the sharp-angled chamfer of the metal frame. While at the bottom is the microphone port, 3.5mm audio jack, USB Type-C port, speaker grill, and antenna lines.

Left side

Right side

On the left are the antenna lines, SIM tray, microphone ports, and the volume rocker while on the right side are two Magnetic Pop-up Triggers, two slider switches, antenna lines, and the power button that doubles as the fingerprint scanner.

The SIM tray houses up to two nano SIM cards only. Unfortunately, memory can not be expanded on the Black Shark 4.

The two sliding switches serve to lock and unlock the triggers. Once unlocked, the magnetic triggers pop up and a switch-like sound plays. Outside of their use for gaming, the magnetic triggers switches on the one-handed mode and the screenshot feature.

Rear camera module

At the back is a triple rear camera set-up made up of a 48MP f/1.8 main camera, 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 5MP f/2.4 telephoto camera. While on the punch hole is a 20MP f/2.45 selfie camera. 

The included camera app includes the following modes: Photo, Video, Pro, Night, 48M, Short Video, Panorama, VLOG, Slow motion, and Time-lapse. The camera's Pro mode includes controls for the white balance, focus, shutter speed, ISO, EV, and lens.

Running the show is JoyUI 12.5-based Android 11 that Black Shark says is engineered for gaming.

Stay tuned for the camera samples in our full review.

As of the moment

GIZGUIDE website

In the Philippines, the Black Shark 4 was just teased to arrive on April 28. As of this article's writing, there is no price yet. It will be up for pre-order on April 28, 2021, at the Black Shark store on Shopee.

AnTuTu score!

Out of the box, the phone has a striking gaming look and vibe. The display is bright and large. The unique feature of the phone is the Magnetic Pop-up Triggers that challenge the capacitive trigger buttons of the competition. Because it is a physical button, we expect it to have a better experience but because it has moving parts, we are concerned with the life span of the triggers. 

Good value for the expected price!

Aside from that, the Black Shark 4 looks like a compelling value-for-money gaming device. We will have to wait until its official announcement to see how it stacks up with the competition.

So stay tuned for our full review on how the device performs.

What do you guys think?