Xiaomi 's Next-Gen Black Shark Gaming Phone Teased, Might Have Snapdragon 855 Chip

Smartphones specifically designed for gaming are a relatively new phenomenon in the mobile space, but interest is growing from consumers. One of the first players to enter the market was Xiaomi with its Black Shark, and the company later followed up with the Black Shark Helo this past October.

Now we're learning that Xiaomi is coming back for a third time with another dedicated gaming phone. The folks over at XDA-Developers stumbled upon a Weibo post by Xiaomi Product Director Wang Teng Thomas in which he remarked about how fast the upcoming device will be. Thomas also reached out to enthusiasts for their input on features that could make their way to the production version of the smartphone.

There were no details provided on what kind of specs we can expect from this new Black Shark smartphone, but it's almost guaranteed to be equipped with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 855 SoC -- the previous two Black Shark smartphones were powered by the Snapdragon 845.

The current-generation Black Shark Helo is available with up to 10GB of RAM, however, it's rumored that Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S10+ will be available with up to 12GB of RAM. It's possible that Xiaomi may also look to offer a 12GB SKU as well, which is more memory than is installed on many PCs that ship these days.

We might also expect to see other features that are certain to be all the rage in 2019 including a punch hole display (for the selfie camera) and an in-display fingerprint reader.

Current entries in the gaming smartphone market include the ASUS ROG Phone, Razer Phone 2 and the aforementioned Black Shark models. In addition, we've seen patent designs for a conceptual folding Galaxy F smartphone with an integrated, rotating gaming controller.