BLU Vivo 4.3

Today we’ll be reviewing the BLU Vivo 4.3. Normally BLU has a reputation of releasing not so powerful phones. Granted they look awesome and are absolutely gorgeous, all of them, they aren’t usually too powerful. Quite the opposite really, they can barely be considered decent. Perhaps those days have passed. Perhaps all of the future phones will be like this one. This phone is quite a powerful one. Even more so, it is a Dual-SIM phone and you know the Dual-SIM ones are rarely good in the hardware department.

Also, while some people may claim that this phone is extremely weak, it is still of a better value than most phones with the same hardware specification. It also has Android OS v4.0 on it, which tends to increase the price by a few hundreds of dollars on most devices. While my sources claim this phone goes for around 210 euros, most shops will add quite a lot to that price. Some will even double it. However, now you have an estimate towards which the best price should tend.

Also, for the BLU Vivo 4.3’s low price, it is loaded with a ton of features. It has a really ungodly amount of features for this price, which really leads me to believe that that is barely an estimated price, and not a final one. But enough about this. Since I don’t like talking too long in intros, let us commence this little review.

SUMMARY

As I promised a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, somewhere in the space-time continuum, but most likely a few months ago, I would start all my reviews from here on with a brief summary of the device’s good points and bad ones. However, as a friendly warning, know that I will not be posting any useful information, or if you find any, there will be little to none. If you truly want to find out some useful facts about this phone, do move forwards to the next part.

The BLU Vivo 4.3 has a ton of good things to its name. Its screen is one of the best to date, the memory is more than decent, the connectivity is okay, the camera is pretty good, the battery is more than powerful enough and not to mention this is a Dual-SIM phone. Let us remember what history has thought us : usually, Dual-SIM phones tend to be weaker than the normal ones for some ungodly reason.

The bad parts of this phone are few and you will see them when the time comes. They are too few and irrelevant to mention at the current time. Rest assured this device also has bad points, as all devices have. Actually, come to think of it, nothing good comes in this world without its drawbacks.

GENERAL

As I mentioned, this is a Dual-SIM phone and it supports both 2G and 3G networks. Those networks are as following : 2G ( GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 and GSM 1900 on both SIM 1 and SIM 2 ) and 3G ( HSDPA 900 and HSDPA 2100 on D910i and HSDPA 850 and HSDPA 1900 on D910a ). As for the announcement and release dates of this phone, they both are a bit mysterious and cryptic. The phone was announced in July 2012 and is to come out somewhere around August 2012. At least they made the effort of saying a certain month, not like the rest, just mentioning a period of three months.

BODY

The aspect of this phone is wonderful. While it may not have any particularities that might set it apart, its own splendid look will make it stand out from any crowd / line-up. The BLU Vivo 4.3 is around 128 x 66 x 9.3 mm big and it weighs somewhere around 120 grams. As you can see, this phone isn’t too big but it isn’t too small either. As far as I see it, it’s the optimal size, and the has the optimal size screen as well – 4.3 inches.

DISPLAY

As I already said, the screen of the BLU Vivo 4.3 is one of the finest in existence. This phone has a Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with approximately 16 million colors. Now in case anyone is wondering what this Super AMOLED gives as opposed to the regular AMOLED, I will be posting here a quick note to illuminate you :

Super AMOLED is Samsung’s term for an AMOLED display with an integrated digitizer, meaning, the layer that detects touch is integrated into the screen, rather than being overlaid on top of it. According to Samsung, Super AMOLED reflects 5 times less sunlight compared to the first generation AMOLED. The display technology itself is not changed. Also, Super AMOLED displays uses a PenTile RGBG subpixel arrangement that has fewer subpixels than a traditional RGB RGB subpixel arrangement.

The screen of this device, as I already mentioned, is around 4.3 inches big and can house a resolution of approximately 480 x 800 pixels. The pixel density of this screen is pretty good, although not the best. This pixel density is around 217 ppi, which by my standards, isn’t so bad for a 4.3 inch screen. But since it is widely accepted that pixel densities of over 300 are the best, this phone has a long way to go.

The BLU Vivo 4.3 also has Multitouch on it, however, it isn’t the advanced sorts of multitouch which can support more than two simultaneous fingers on it ( granted, I never really understood WHY you would need more than two fingers ). Also, this phone has Touch-Sensitive controls instead of frontal buttons. It may be a bit disappointing to see that this phone has no screen protection whatsoever on it, so you’ll have to be extra careful with its handling. Then again, that in itself isn’t a problem since people rarely play soccer with their phones.

SOUND

The audio output capabilities of this device are pretty standard and there’s not much point in discussing them. The phone has a default loudspeaker and 3.5 mm jack, and of course anything from Vibration, MP3 or WAV ringtones will do as alert types. Apparently, the BLU Vivo 4.3 has no notable sound enhancement whatsoever on it, be them software-based or hardware-based.

MEMORY

The memory of this device is pretty peculiar as my sources claim that the BLU Vivo 4.3 has around 4 GB of ROM memory. Usually ROM memory stands for the memory used strictly by the system. That considered, I can’t say how much of that storage space is actually available for the user. Still, in case not much is user-available, know that this phone also has a Micro SD card that can use any card of up to 32 GB.

The RAM of this device is pretty standard – around 1 GB. While one can expect all new phones from here on to come out with 2  GB instead of one, that is a bit too much to ask from BLU as they have only recently gotten with the technology and added a Dual-Core processor to their devices. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it had happened an year ago, but considering that today’s market is dominated by Quad-Core devices and Tegra equipped devices, having a Dual-Core phone is a bit dated. I’m not one to complain since I use a phone as a phone, and not as a multimedia device, but others may not be so generous with their judgement.

DATA CONNECTION

The connectivity of this device is pretty okay. Mostly, I’m grateful for the fact that my sources managed to get a bit of info about each and every part here. The GPRS and EDGE of the BLU Vivo 4.3 are both Class 12 ones. While I can’t say the exact speed of the EDGE, it’s a totally different story for the GPRS : it is a Class 12 one with 4+1, 3+2, 2+3 and 1+4 slots that reaches a speed of around 32 ~ 48 KB/s. The Speed per say of this device is measured as following : HSDPA at 7.2 MB/s and HSUPA at around 5.76 MB/s. The WLAN of this device is a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with nothing else to it ( if it works, it passes with flying colors in my books ). The Bluetooth of this device is a v3.0 one and has no features of its own. Also, this phone has a Micro USB v2.0 port on it.

CAMERA

As I already mentioned, the camera of the BLU Vivo 4.3 is a really fabulous one – an 8 MP main camera that can photograph at resolutions of around 3264 x 2448 pixels. While 8 MP cameras can record in 1080p full HD at around 30 frames per second under normal circumstances, I see that’s not the case with this device as my sources say it can only record in 720p HD at an unknown framerate. Still, the camera has a ton of features such as : autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, touch focus, image stabilization and face and smile detection. The BLU Vivo 4.3 also has a secondary 1.3 MP camera, however, that one has no features of its own and there isn’t much point in talking too much about it.

BATTERY LIFE

The battery of this phone is a pretty powerful one. This phone has a Standard Li-Ion 1600 mAh battery which can withstand power consumption for quite some time. It can survive for up to 780 hours of stand-by in 2G and up to 640 hours of stand-by in 3G and for up to 19 hours and 10 minutes talk-time in 2G and 9 hours and 20 minutes of talk-time in 3G. All and all, it’s a pretty decent battery and it should ensure the survival of your phone, especially since this one isn’t a really big power monger.

Also, something I wished to discuss is this thing about the stand-by time. No matter what it says here, you can be certain that you will NEVER really keep it alive for that long. Part of the thing that is keeping you from that is the fact that you will most certainly always have a background app or whatnot that will be devouring your battery. Since you can never keep your phone empty of all activity when it’s on, you will never be able to keep it alive for those many hours.

HARDWARE

This is a relatively powerful hardware set, but as I said before, it is quite at the middle of the food chain, to call it that, if you are to compare it with most of the phones released today. Still, going into the medium part is a good thing for BLU, as they have always been among the last producers as far as hardware is considered. All they usually had is the looks. The hardware of this phone is as following : a Dual-Core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 processor with a MediaTek MT6577 chipset and a PowerVR SGX531 GPU. A decent hardware setting, if I do say so myself. It should run pretty much any app, but stay away from the more video-demanding games ( those that seem like they are taken from the PC ).

SOFTWARE

As I already mentioned before, this phone has Android OS v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. There is no information available yet as of whether or not this phone will be able to suppor Android OS v4.1 Jelly Bean, but then again, BLU did make a step up the ladder through the very fact that they made a phone with the current latest Android OS version. The BLU Vivo 4.3 should handle quite well, even with this OS. You should have no problem whatsoever with this phone for at least an year or so ( which is quite a long time as far as phone tech goes ).

FEATURES

The BLU Vivo 4.3 is full of features and capabilities. The sensors of this device are : Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Proximity and Compass. This phone’s messaging is done via : SMS ( with Threaded View ), MMS, E-Mail, Push E-Mail and IM. The browser of this device uses HTML and has built-in support for Adobe Flash. Also, this phone has a Stereo FM radio and a GPS with built-in A-GPS support. The BLU Vivo 4.3 also has Java via Java MIDP emulation and it is available in two colors : Black and White ( I must say, the Black one look  more awesome than the White one, but that’s just my opinion ).

Here is a brief list of what the BLU Vivo 4.3 can do :

• Dual SIM (Dual stand-by)
• SNS integration
• MP3/AAC/WMA/WAV player
• MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263 player
• Organizer
• Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF)
• Google Search, Maps, Gmail, Youtube, Calendar, Google Talk
• Voice memo/dial/commands
• Predictive text input (Swype)

This concludes our little review of the BLU Vivo 4.3. If you feel that anything is lacking from this review feel free to leave your suggestions in the comment section below for things which should be added and I will be sure to take them into consideration when writing my future projects. In the meantime, I sincerely hope you had as much fun reading my little review as I had writing it.