- Analysis by KJ David
A follow-up to Xiaomi's 2018 Black Shark gaming smartphone, the Black Shark 2 tweaks its predecessor's pros and cons in terms of hardware, display, and cameras, while retaining the older model's flagship DNA. Having said that, we still caught a couple of disgruntling specs that might put this phone on the back foot versus some of its flagship contemporaries.
For starters, it does not come with a memory card slot for storage expansion 
and it is limited to either 256GB or 128GB of inbuilt UFS 2.1 memory -- a few of its gaming rivals boast 512GB native storage caps. Also, considering its high-octane hardware pros, which we'll get to further down this Phonerated review, its decision to stick to the original Black Shark's 4000mAh battery power comes off as a slight con in our book.
Another drawback is the fact that its 6.4-inch AMOLED display settles for a 1080p FHD+ definition only , instead of shooting for a 2K-1440p sharpness, like many of the best phablets around. That notwithstanding, its screen still makes the high-end cut, especially with a 3D pressure-sensing technology and an in-display fingerprint reader 
tagging along.
The Xiaomi Black Shark 2's pros and cons are powered by a Snapdragon 855 eight-core engine that peaks at 2.84GHz , which made it one of the fastest smartphones on the market when it debuted. Its engine is accompanied by a whopping 12GB LPDDR4x RAM , an Adreno 640 graphics processor, and a tower-type liquid cooling system that underscores its focus towards heavy mobile gaming.
This Black Shark sequel's strong suits include imaging as well, since it blusters with a premium-class dual camera consisting of a 48-megapixel primary cam and a 12-megapixel telephoto cam that's largely for optical zooming (2x) and depth analysis. Check out other photography-first smartphones here. As for selfies, it touts a high-class 20-megapixel selfie camera , which is decked out with a 5-piece lens and the 4-in-1 pixel technology.
Wrapping up, the Black Shark 2 caters to gamers and photography junkies alike, offering some flagship-caliber hardware components alongside highly-competitive cameras.
On-paper Review score: 
It's all well and good that the Xiaomi Black Shark 2 can record high-resolution 3840 x 2160 movies, but we were disappointed not to find any evidence of the Black Shark 2 featuring an HDMI port (which is convenient to watch HD videos on your shiny HDTV.)
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Our research didn't show that the Xiaomi Black Shark 2 had a slot for memory expansion.
It's disappointing that we could not find its weight information.
- Recommended alternative: Photo gallery of the latest slim phones
Its processor speed of 2.84GHz running on 8 cores is part of the fastest in recent phones.
- Also read: List of the latest octa-core smartphones
It carries the Miracast technology, a system that lets you share your display with a TV
- See also: The latest Miracast-enabled smartphones
We're dealing with a hefty display here, making it a phablet: 6.4 (actual diagonal size is 6.39 inches) inches and a resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels means about 15.57 square inches and an image quality of at least 403 dots per inch (DPI)!
The Black Shark 2 is one of the rare phones to feature a 48-megapixel (combined with a 12-megapixel sub-cam) camera. It also sports these features: AI camera, HDR, Panorama, Portrait.
The 20-megapixel selfie cam offers an above-average resolution.
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