Xiaomi Black Shark Helo Gaming Smartphone Launches With 10GB RAM

Xiaomi has launched the Black Shark Helo, the successor to the company’s original Black Shark gaming smartphone. The Black Shark Helo features some upgrades, including an AMOLED display and RAM configurations of up to 10GB.

The Black Shark Helo comes with a 6-inch 2160 x 1080 AMOLED display, which replaces the LCD panel that’s on the first Black Shark phone. Switching to an OLED display means that the phone will be able to show deeper blacks and provide higher contrast ratio to produce brighter and more vibrant colors. An OLED display also means that users should be able to save on battery life by using black wallpapers and themes since OLED panels can switch off individual pixels to produce true blacks.

Like the original Black Shark, the new Helo model comes with an Iris mobile video processor from Pixelworks, as pointed out by Android Authority. This should provide additional enhancements to picture quality. Pixelworks has also managed to bring HDR upscaling feature to the Black Shark Helo. This means that the handset will be able to upscale SDR content to HDR.

As for the rest of the device’s internals, the Black Shark Helo is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with 6GB/8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. There’s also a variant with 10GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This makes the Black Shark Helo the very first Android smartphone to have 10GB of RAM. Xiaomi has previously teased that the Mi Mix 3 will have 10GB of RAM. Oppo is also rumored to release a new variant of the Find X with that RAM size, but there’s no word on its potential release date.

The Black Shark Helo also has a new feature called Gamer Studio. This feature will allow users to adjust the capabilities of the handset so that they can get a gaming experience that’s tailored to their liking. For example, a user will be able to adjust the touch sensitivity of the on-screen controls of a specific game.

The original Black Shark gaming smartphone arrived with a gamepad attachment that slides on the left side of the phone. This time, the Black Shark Helo comes with two gamepad attachments. The 6GB and 8GB RAM models will only get one attachment, but the 10GB RAM model will get two.

The Black Shark Helo also comes with a dual-camera setup on its back: one with a 12MP sensor and another with a 20MP sensor. Up front, the gaming smartphone has a 20MP camera for taking selfies. The Black Shark Helo also comes with dual front-facing speakers and a huge 4,000mAh battery. The handset has support for fast charging, 4G LTE and Bluetooth 5.0, according to Phone Arena.

The Xiaomi Black Shark Helo will be available in China starting on Oct. 30. The 6GB/128GB model costs 3,199 yuan (around US$461), while the 8GB/128GB model costs 3,499 yuan (around US$504). Xiaomi hasn’t revealed the price for the 10GB/256GB model yet.