Black Shark 3S Gaming Smartphone With 120Hz AMOLED Display Launched

Black Shark 3S was launched on Friday by gaming smartphone maker Black Shark. This is the company's latest gaming smartphone, after launching the Black Shark 3 and Black Shark 3 Pro earlier in March this year. The new smartphone is similar to the Black Shark 3 in many respects, but does one better thanks to a higher frequency 120Hz refresh rate display and UFS 3.1 flash storage. The Black Shark 3S will be available in China, in two colours — Sky Cloud Black and Crystal Blue.

Black Shark 3S price and variants

The Black Shark 3S will be sold in two variants, both of which will have 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The 128GB storage variant is priced at CNY 3,999 (roughly Rs. 42,620), while the 256GB variant is priced at CNY 4,299 (roughly Rs. 45,800). The Black Shark 3S uses the latest UFS 3.1 flash storage standard, compared to the UFS 3.0 storage in the Black Shark 3 and Black Shark 3 Pro. The phone appears to be on an open sale right now in China, via the Black Shark website.

Black Shark 3S specifications

The Black Shark 3S will continue to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC and not the Snapdragon 865+ SoC, as it was previously rumoured to have. The phone has the following dimensions of 168.72mm x 77.33mm x 10.42mm, and weighs around 222g.

It has a 6.67-inch 120Hz, AMOLED display, with a 20:9 aspect ratio and a full-HD+ resolution (1080x2,400 pixels). The Black Shark 3S' display has a typical brightness of 500nits, with support for the DCI-P3 colour gamut and MEMC motion compensation technology, which we've also seen in the OnePlus 8 Pro (Review).

It's a dual-SIM phone with support for 5G and other wireless connectivity such as Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, and support for multiple satellites for navigation. It also has an in-display fingerprint sensor. The Black Shark 3S comes with a 4,729mAh battery, with support for 65W fast charging.

In terms of cameras, the Black Shark 3S has a 20-megapixel selfie camera, with an f/2.0 aperture. The rear cameras include a main 64-megapixel sensor, with an f/1.8 aperture and phase detection autofocus (PDAF). You also get a 13-megapixel wide-angle camera with a 120-degree field of view, and 5-megapixel depth camera. The Black Shark is capable to recording video at up to 4K 60fps.

There appears to be a sudden rush of gaming smartphone launches. Besides Black Shark, Nubia recently launched the Red Magic 5S with a 144Hz display. Lenovo also launched its equally impressive Legion Phone Duel, with a unique side-mounted, pop-up selfie camera. Finally, we had Asus launch the ROG Phone 3 in India, starting at Rs. 49,999. You can read our first impressions of it right here.