Xiaomi Black Shark: Fortnite! Now!
14.12.2018
Translation: machine translated
Video: Stephanie Tresch
Gamers need more power in a smartphone. Xiaomi fulfils this need with the Black Shark. The device even comes with a gamepad. However, a test with Fortnite shows: Game stupid, gamepad incompatible, phone great.
I'm not a patient person. But as I'm writing these first few lines, my Xiaomi Black Shark is downloading Fortnite to the right of my mouse. Game editor Phil Rüegg says that the game is the new action-packed super title mobile gaming A-list something. I'm not a gamer. I haven't been since Unreal Tournament 99. But every now and then I can get excited about a mobile game. So Fortnite should be it.
And why exactly the Xiaomi Black Shark? I not only like the specs with its 20 megapixel camera, but also the look. Black and green always looks good. The fact that the green symbol on the back also lights up pulsating when the phone is started up is an added bonus. Finally, no rectangle with rounded corners.
The back has a non-slip rubber coating that is almost like a rugged phone, so it feels good in the hand. But I can't say any more than that, because you can only fiddle with a phone and look at a download screen for so long before you feel stupid. So if you want to play Fortnite, download the game somewhere where you can do something else to kill time.
One way or another, the Black Shark is one of the most interesting phones of the year. Hardly any other phone has given me so much to think about or ask myself. This makes life as a phone tester really fun.
A look at gaming phones in winter 2018
The Fortnite download is at around 1.7 gigabytes as I write these lines here. In total, the download is 2.73 gigabytes in size, which is coming to my Black Shark via the Swiss 4G network. Time to take a closer look at the gamer phones.
There are some smartphones on the market that are explicitly made for gaming. There is the Razer Phone, the Asus ROG Phone and the Xiaomi Black Shark, which have already made a name for themselves. They have specs that allow for a lot of graphics and employees and beautiful screens with a refresh rate of 120 hertz. This is supposed to minimise flickering and other visual impairments. And it does. 120 hertz is damn sexy. The disadvantage: AMOLED screens are only available in the very expensive versions. My Black Shark comes with an LCD screen.
Both the Snapdragon 845 system-on-a-chip (SoC) and the Exynos counterpart from Samsung should easily deliver the performance that a game needs. I am somewhat sceptical about the new MediaTek SoC, the Helio P23. The performance of MediaTeks is always heavily dependent on the rest of the hardware and the implementation. The price difference to the other gaming phones also suggests certain compromises in terms of performance. But on paper, the P23 also delivers what a game needs.
But now Fortnite
Download ready. I am ready. Time to play Battle Royale in bright colours.
If only it were that easy.
Fortnite is distributed by Epic Games. However, as Epic Games has no desire to deal with Google or the gaming top dog Steam, the game publisher quickly launched its own store. The Epic Games Store makes the same mistake that pretty much all international players who haven't spent two minutes in Switzerland make: They just assume that all Swiss people speak French across the board. Funny.
In addition, the store on Android is almost useless in this form. If you want to download Fortnite, it's quicker to google "Fortnite Android Beta APK site:epicgames.com". Then download an installer file in APK format that is not the game APK. This is generated by the installer APK.
The game itself is almost 3GB in size. Therefore: Maybe don't download the game via the chronically overloaded antiquated 2.4GHz WLAN in the office or the mobile network. Use your stable 5GHz WLAN, which is connected to a glass fibre. Then it works for a few minutes and you're good to go.
Once the game is on your phone, you have to wait for what feels like an eternity until the stupid "optimising content" - whatever that means - is ready. Closely followed by a loading screen. Then a news screen. Maybe a few settings in between. Then you can wait in a kind of waiting room level for your opponents to be calculated and then you can finally play. Oh yes, and every few days an update comes in that costs you a few minutes again. Epic Games definitely needs to put some work into their store to make it usable for mobile platforms.
Interlude I: A typical update in pictures
Practically every time you launch Fortnite, something needs to be updated. The following photo love story shows that Epic Games needs to think about an auto update mode that can be switched on and off manually. Or rather: not think about it, but implement it. Because the game is currently almost broken.
As a non-gamer and former first-person shooter fan, the game itself is too boring for me. I'm not going to traipse around the countryside for seven hours only to be killed within a few seconds by an Italian shouting at me. And what the hell is "Auto Fire"? A shooter game that shoots itself? You're all out of your minds!
Interlude II: Dominik plays games
Colleague Luca Fontana asks me what I'm doing when he sees me pressing buttons like a madman and getting visibly upset about my wanderings. I describe it to him. But what I don't know is that he's taking notes. So here's a best-of of my comments from the first quarter of an hour of Fortnite on Android.
"So now I can jump here. Can I even do that here? I have jumped. Huaaa! I have jumped. Luca, I've jumped!"
Aurel: "Are you playing something right now?"
Dominik: "I'm playing against the Italians right now, who are beating me up. I usually have Luca for that sort of thing."
"Now I've got a minigun. I actually want to shoot someone with it, but no, I have to go on a seven-hour hike on a vitaparcours. Can I shoot now? Okay... okay. Asshole machine."
The game itself runs smoothly once the 100 players have been sorted into a level. Even on 3G, the performance is still okay. That was initially my biggest concern, but it was then lost with all the loading and info screens. In other words, when you finally start playing, the game runs quite smoothly.
The thing with the gamepad
The Xiaomi Black Shark comes with a gamepad. This is supposed to help with gaming. It may be good, but the device is currently not compatible with Fortnite. Hopefully that will come, because the joystick could really help in the game. One less hand on the screen allows more visibility and - should you ever find an opponent, screaming Italian or whatever - more visibility is better for opening fire.
Attaching the gamepad to the Black Shark is quite amusing. Before you can mount the directional pad with the one shoulder button on top of your phone, you have to mount the case. I don't understand the case at all. As a rule, the case supplied is there to protect your new phone. From drops and so on. The Black Shark case is made of wobbly hard plastic that is too thin to be stable. I highly doubt that the case is capable of protecting anything from anyone.
On the other side is the gamepad. It feels really good. The joystick moves fluidly and smoothly, the shoulder button is pleasantly clicky and the weight of the Black Shark with the gamepad is not too left-field. The pad is really good work. If I could mount the pad on my mobile phone without a case, that would be great. Especially because the touch sensitivity of the screen at the edge sometimes reacts a bit strangely or not at all. That could be a deciding factor if I ever find an opponent on this Fortnite Vitaparcours.
Shark Mode: Where the work went
Aware observers have already noticed that there is one more button on the Black Shark than on some other phones. As with Apple's iPhone, this is a slider. On the iPhone it is "Sound on/off", on the Xiaomi it is "Shark Space on/off".
Shark Space is what Xiaomi calls the mode in which you command your smartphone to ignore all smartphone functions in order to concentrate fully on gaming. Notifications are suppressed and calls are ignored. But hopefully not the battery warning, because Fortnite eats up battery. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Xiaomi has put a lot of work into this, as the normal operating system outside of Shark Mode is largely similar to stock Android, the pure version of the operating platform. The home button at the bottom of the phone, or on the right in landscape mode, becomes a gesture-sensitive surface in shark mode. You can activate a menu, the so-called Game Dock, with a gesture and make quick settings there. I really like that. The dock works, reacts quickly and is also intuitively designed.
Fortnite not only needs a lot of graphics performance, but also constant data transfer. The Snapdragon 845 doesn't reach its limit for a long time, but the Black Shark gets a bit warm while playing and the battery drains quite quickly. But it doesn't slow down. Impressive. Gaming on the charging cable is a bit complicated, though, because your right hand can no longer hold the phone properly.
I'm wondering whether it wouldn't have been smarter in this specific case to attach the charging port to one of the long sides, preferably the left. Because then you could charge while the phone is charging. This is also possible with the current hardware configuration, but it is then simply difficult to hold. Since the Black Shark no longer has a headphone jack, it would be doubly nice if the USB port was on the side, because then gaming on the bus home would be twice as cool. Not only would I be able to hold the Black Shark comfortably, but I wouldn't be annoying anyone with the noise. Because then I have headphones plugged in and the Italians only shout at me, nobody else. Or just Bluetooth headphones.
Because mobile gaming is loud, according to Xiaomi. When you switch to Shark Mode, you hear a jingle. A buzzing sound, then a ringing sound. Even if you have your phone in "Do Not Disturb" mode. I find that a bit offensive. As a user, I expect my technology to do exactly what I tell it to do. And if I explicitly tell it to shut up, then that's what it has to do. I don't want a jingle and no in-game soundtrack and no screaming Italians. That kind of thing annoys me. And all the other people on the bus too. They're already annoyed enough by the obligatory screaming child that seems to be a standard feature of every ZVV bus.
Where are you, future victims?
In the end, with the Xiaomi Black Shark you have a highly interesting and high-performance phone that looks really smart and is not just a rectangle with rounded corners. Xiaomi has thought beyond the limits of the device and delivers peripherals that really make a difference. However, it is also obvious that the gaming phone concept still needs to be refined a little to make it truly practical and universally compatible.
Fortnite is still boring. It would probably be better if I could find someone to shoot for once and not just wade through the pampas.
So that's it. Incidentally, the Black Shark is also a very good everyday mobile phone. Above all, it looks very smart. <p
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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