It connects via Bluetooth rather than plugging directly into the phone, giving you yet another thing to charge on a regular basis. It's a recipe for hand cramps, but it's unlikely you'll get to that point because the internal battery only lasts about two hours in total. It's just not very comfortable to use for any period of time, particularly with my spindly fingers. The thumbstick is really short, not very grippy and it sits a bit lower than your thumb naturally rests. The gamepad itself just feels a bit cheap, too, as it's made of light, flimsy plastic. For starters, you have to snap an ugly plastic frame on to the Black Shark, and only then will the controller fit snugly against the device.
While the gamepad definitely makes you a stronger competitor in shooters, that's one of the only good things about it.
There are plenty of games that have either simpler or static control schemes, of course, and your preferences are saved for individual titles so you don't have to constantly rebind. There's a handy little overlay you can bring up at any time to change the position of the thumbstick and button inputs on the fly, but that's something you're not going to want to do when you're attempting to flee a firefight by jumping into a buggy. And when you jump into a vehicle, the UI changes and your bindings aren't in the right place anymore.
There are so many things you need to prod at on-screen, like equipping meds or managing your backpack inventory, that often you have to awkwardly reach over the controller to get at the left side of the touchscreen. This is something a pure mobile player simply can't do, and it introduces such a competitive advantage that it basically feels like cheating. By binding aiming and firing to the two buttons, I can strafe, quick-scope and fire without having to take my right thumb off aiming duties. Instead, it's mainly due to the trigger buttons, which allow you to use a forefinger that would typically be out of action. That's not so much because of the thumbstick - though it's definitely preferable to moving around using the touchscreen as it's a more tactile input device. It's more adapted to shooters than anything else, and I have been absolutely shredding other PUBG Mobile players using the attachment. This Joy-Con-esque peripheral is another unique selling point of the Black Shark, and the pitch is that you get the best of both worlds: a thumbstick on the left for movement and a touchscreen on the right for precision aiming. If there's one practical reason for the relatively thick bezel above the screen: It's so the included gamepad attachment doesn't obscure any of it. In an era of notches and nigh edge-to-edge screens, the Black Shark looks behind the curve. There's a lot of plastic, after all, and the fingerprint reader sits below the display and there are a couple of obvious chunky bezels. And aside from the busy body, the Black Shark looks a bit dated compared with many devices. The green detailing and complexity is supposed to appeal to gamerz, but I'm sure there are plenty of people within that niche who would rather their phone didn't broadcast "I'm a huge nerd" to everyone in the vicinity. It's not really customizable, though, in the sense that you can only tell it whether to light up or not when these triggers occur. The Black Shark logo on the back of the phone even lights up when you get a notification, call or enter the special Shark Space mode (more on that later).
Many PC accessories - like headphones and keyboards - have a similar design language: one that aims to capture the futuristic, custom PC-case aesthetic and translate it to lesser objects. It's all a bit tacky and tryhard in my opinion. I'm much more inclined to believe the bumps are simply to make it look cooler than your average handset. It doesn't feel any different to gaming on other phones without these intricacies. But you don't notice this even slightly when you're actually holding the thing, popping heads. The back panel is an elaborate mix of plastics, curves and contours that are supposed to be ergonomically arranged for the best gaming experience. The differentiation starts in the design. It's a semi-startup focused exclusively on mobile gaming, but what exactly makes the Black Shark (yes, it's a namesake device) a gaming phone as opposed to just, a phone? The look You probably won't have heard of Black Shark, but it's not so much an anonymous company as a Xiaomi side project that's using the electronics-giant's money and manufacturing resources. It launched earlier this year in China, and there's already a sequel of sorts available in the region.