Xiaomi's first gaming smartphone Black Shark set to launch April 13

• Xiaomi will unveil the Black Shark gaming smartphone on April 13 in Beijing, China
• The smartphone is said to be powered by a Snapdragon 845 SoC with 8GB of RAM
• Xiaomi had reportedly bought a stake in a game company called Black Shark
• The Black Shark smartphone will be the first gaming smartphone born out of the association 
• The smartphone is said to launch without the Xiaomi branding in Europe and Noth America

Xiaomi is all set to unveil its first gaming-centric smartphone next week. The Chinese smartphone company has sent out an official press invite for the launch of the Black Shark gaming smartphone to be held April 13 in its hometown Beijing. Not much is known about the Black Shark smartphone as of now, but it is highly speculated to launch with Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 845 chipset.

The invite, which surfaced on Chinese social network Weibo, does not reveal much about the device apart from highlighting the 'Black Shark' title and the launch date. It also carries Xiaomi's Mi logo alongside the Black Shark logo, confirming that the device will be made by Black Shark, a company that is backed by Xiaomi. A Qualcomm logo and the availability of the Snapdragon 845 chipset onboard the device are also displayed on the invite. 

For the past few months, Xiaomi had been rumored to be working on a gaming-centric device that would take on the likes of the  Razer Phone, but the news was somewhat overshadowed by reports of the Mi Mix 2S.

Early reports suggested that the Black Shark smartphone will be powered by Qualcomm's most powerful processor till date – the Snapdragon 845. The same was confirmed by the handset's Geekbench and AnTuTu benchmark listings that were leaked last month.

The AnTuTu listing also reveals that the Black Shark phone will come with a full HD+ (1080x2160 pixels) display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and 8GB of RAM. Interestingly, the AnTuTu benchmarking revealed that the gaming phone Xiaomi may have a 32GB of internal storage model as well.

The Geekbench listing also confirms that the handset comes with 8GB of RAM and running Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. It revealed that the upcoming smartphone managed to score 2452 in single-core and 8452 in multi-core.

The Black Shark smartphone is also rumored to have a 120Hz refresh rate display, which would enable the device to offer a smooth stutter-free gaming experience with zero frame-lag.

Rumors also suggest that Xiaomi may launch the Black Shark gaming phone in two RAM + Storage configurations: 6GB RAM + 64GB storage and 8GB RAM + 256GB inbuilt storage.

These specifications make the Black Shark a very serious contender to the Razer Phone, which is possibly the only other fully gaming-centric Android smartphone on the market right now. However, expect the Black Shark to be priced a little cheaper than the Razer Phone as Xiaomi has always maintained a fair record for pricing its phones very competitively.

For the uninitiated, Xiaomi had reportedly made an undisclosed investment in the game development firm called Black Shark and the upcoming smartphone will be the first product to be born out of the collaboration.