An ICE COLD Gaming Phone? - Durability Test!

So it's been a pretty tough year for

gaming

phone

s, with both the ROG Phone 5 and Legion Phone 2 acing the game in their first

durability

test

. It's time to see if this Black Shark 4 can hold up better. Today's video is sponsored by Omaze, who I've partnered with to give away a new, custom Tesla Model S and $20,000 in cash that you can keep or pay for. Omaze makes these massive giveaways while supporting nonprofits. And in this particular case, we support a nonprofit called Give Power, which helps bring energy and clean water to regions around the world that need it.

I'll explain more at the end of the video, but you can always go to omaze.com/jerry to enter for a chance to win. And of course I'll put a link in the description. I think it's time we see how durable this Black Shark 4 really is. Let's get started. The Black Shark 4 is intriguing for multiple reasons, one is its $500 price tag and the other is this active cooling coolant which we'll get to in a second. Inside the box we received a free hard plastic case... kind of nice. Free protection is a good thing. And then we have the

phone

itself.

It's quite different from last year's design. It's still incredibly eye-catching as a

gaming

phone usually is. But we're missing the framed metal X on the back panel, which means this bending

test

could be quite interesting. It also has a 1020-watt fast charger in the box. Black Shark was one of the first devices to implement that dual battery charging, so I guess that's what's happening again this year. 120 watts is an impressive amount of power and should charge from 0 to 100% in just about 17 minutes. We will try the case just for fun and laughter. I always have a case on my own phone.

It looks like the case won't be compatible with that cooler, so we can take it off for now. The other interesting component of this new Black Shark phone is the physical motorized pop-up activation buttons in the corners. Most gaming phones have some kind of capacitive or ultrasonic shutter button on the frame, but there's something to be said for an actual touch button. These buttons can be assigned to all kinds of different tasks when not in game mode. And this year instead of motorizing these buttons, this ascending action is done with magnets. I'm not entirely sure how, but I'm sure we'll figure it out from within during decommissioning, you know, if it survives that long.

Let's talk about the refrigerator for a second. Getting rid of excess heat is a task that every electronic part must deal with. Most smartphones have a passive cooling method with heatpipes and vapor chambers. And some have a more active solution like the dual fans inside the Legion 2... rest in peace. Out of the box, this fun Cooler 2 Pro has a starting temperature of 73 degrees Fahrenheit, and once I plug it into an external power source, we instantly get fan movement as well as a digital readout of the cooler's temperature. And in a matter of seconds we have already dropped 20 degrees to 56 degrees Fahrenheit.

This is an active cooler on steroids and is surprisingly affordable. Last year's version only costs about $40 right now. We'll put this aside here to see how

cold

it can get as we start testing this Black Shark 4, starting with the scratch test. Xiaomi is nice enough to include a built-in screen protector on the Black Shark 4. We'll tear it off and test the surface underneath. As we know, plastic screens will start scratching at level 2 or 3. Glass screens will start scratching at level 5 or 6. And sapphire screens will start scratching at level 8 or 9. And as we can see in The Black Shark 4 is made with tempered glass since we have scratches from level 6, with deeper grooves from level 7.

It has been a long time since we came across a plastic screen. Our refrigerator is still there cooling, now at 0 degrees Celsius. My laser temperature thermometer shows around 38 Fahrenheit, which is about 3 degrees Celsius. So it looks like there are a few degrees of discrepancy, but it could also be that the location of the internal therma is closer to the refrigerator than my laser. Either way, it's still pretty impressive. Let's keep going. The Black Shark 4 has a small hole in the screen for that 20-pixel selfie camera and two stereo speakers. The headset is covered with a plastic grill that does not come off on its own.

The side magnetic pop-up buttons are also made of metal, along with the textured switch that activates the lift. The buttons seem solid and can't be removed or damaged with a hammer, which is good news. The rest of the structure is also made of metal. The side-mounted fingerprint-reading power button can get scratched, but we'll get to that in a second. The top of the phone is pretty empty. Then we have the dual SIM card tray and the volume rocker on the left side, both made of metal. The SIM card tray does not include any expandable memory. However, the bottom of the phone has a USB-C and a little friend, the headphone jack.

Another example of a budget phone that rivals more features than the expensive ones. When I first took the Black Shark 4 out of the box, I assumed the black panel was glass. But it turns out that it is not. Although it seems fine to me. Art class with Jerry is back in session. the fun refrigerator is now in the negative digits, just below freezing. And here, on the back of the Black Shark 4, we now have a tooth. The size is pretty accurate for a great white shark, you know, the huge sharks that currently swim in the ocean.

I drew a Great White tooth because if I were to draw an extinct Megalodon tooth it wouldn't fit, as the largest Megladon tooth ever found is about 7 inches long and would disappear from the top and bottom of the plastic panel. How strange is that to you? The Black Shark 4 has 3 rear cameras: the main 48 megapixel, then we have an 8 megapixel wide angle in the middle, followed by a 5 megapixel depth sensor, all hidden under the same piece of glass. With our freezer in there as

cold

as ice, it's only fair to bring in some heat from the opposite end of the temperature spectrum.

This type has a 6.6-inch 1080p display, with a 144 hertz refresh rate and 720 hertz touch sampling rate. Quite similar to that Legion Dual 2. The AMOLED screen on this Black Shark 4 lasted about 25 seconds under the heat of my lighter before turning white, but it eventually recovered. Before we check out that refrigerator icicle, let's test the side-mounted fingerprint scanner. This has already been scratched so it took a little longer than usual to set up my fingerprint as it was damaged. But I'll be honest, I think I prefer this side-mounted setup on the power button more than the under-screen sensors, because if it doesn't register my fingerprint or my fingers are wet or dirty, my finger is already on the power button. on and just makes unlocking the phone much faster.

I wish more smartphones did it this way. Finally, let's see how this refrigerated refrigerator works from the inside. Black Shark calls it the Fun Cooler 2. We had it turned down to about negative 1 degree Celsius when it was alone. Plugging it into a hot phone raises the temperature to about 3 degrees Celsius, but it's still like playing with your phone inside a refrigerator. It's practically guaranteed to keep everything cool and allow you to push the internal processor well beyond its normal capacity. There are 3 screws under the fan grill, and then we have a thin piece of black rubber, which probably helps keep the plastic back of the phone protected from the copper metal layer of the cooler.

There are 4 screws holding the bottom copper to the fan. Black Shark is using a thermal electric cooler inside this thing, sometimes called a Peltier cooler, since that's the guy who invented it in the 1830s. However, he didn't know that people would use his technology to release Angry Birds to pigs more efficiently on their smartphones. Welcome to the future. The internal components of the board are covered with a thick rubber waterproofing layer. Since super low temperature differences can literally form ice inside here in humid environments, you might think that this metal part and these metal fins are for the phone, but actually this is made for the back of the Peltier Cooler from the opposite side.

The white freezer chip heats up as the side facing the phone cools. We can see this in action when I plug in the disassembled cooler and remove the freezer chip from the back of the heatsink without the fan and metal cooler to help remove the heat produced by the Peltier cooler, which can go up into the range of 150 degrees before it gets too hot to the touch. It's pretty cool technology. Even better is that this fits virtually any phone, not just the Black Shark 4. Peltier chips can also be used to generate electricity when placed in extreme temperature situations, but that's an experiment for a different video.

It's time to see how well the Black Shark 4, with its plastic back and pop-up triggers, can handle the bending test. I'm a little nervous because the last two gaming phones didn't survive. But when you bend it from the back, the phone flexes, then locks and doesn't break. When flipped and folded from the front, we get a subtle curve and the screen shrinks to one-handed mode, but nothing catastrophically breaks. It's nice to have a phone survive again. It bends further to the right above the power button, so I imagine that's where the battery and motherboard meet inside the device.

But we won't know for sure until decommissioning. I'm looking forward to this one. Not bad for a $500 gaming phone. Just make sure to keep an eye out for all the Saltwater Megalodons when you're in the ocean. Speaking of the ocean... As I mentioned before, Omaze is a company that works with creators to provide experiences and work with non-profit organizations. And for every donation made, you'll be entered to win super big prizes. In this particular case, it's a custom Tesla Model S and it costs $20,000. Samantha W. won the Tesla Model 3 Performance in the latest drawing for her dream home.

The nonprofit we support is called Give Power. There are over 2.2 billion people on the planet who do not have access to clean water and Give Power can provide electricity and clean water to those who need it. Give Power can also extract salt from the ocean to produce drinking water for humans, animals and plants. It's pretty cool technology. So, for your chance to win the custom Tesla Model S and $20,000 in cash, simply head to Omaze.com/jerry to enter for your chance to win. Big thanks to Omaze for creating this, raising awareness about Give Power, and making things a little more interesting for people who decide to donate.

Do you think the Black Shark 4 is going to be as complicated to open as the Black Shark 3? Let me know in the comments. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. And thank you very much for watching. I'll see you there.