Blu life One X2 review!
Blu is a popular company that manufactures good quality devices, under a budget. Their smartphones are quite popular, especially in US shores, and now they've launched another one. I can say its one of the cheapest phones to offer pretty respectable specs. Their previous Life One X was very a successful smartphone. They're back at it again, with more to offer, with the new Blu life one X2. Let's see what we get for the price of sub $200.
Design: The phone takes a premium turn from it's predecessor. The leather textured back is gone and is replaced with an aluminum unibody. The power and vilume buttons are in the right hand side, a headphone jack up top and a microUSB port in the bottom. There's also a speaker with an identically cut microphone grill. The phone also comes with the same 2.5D curved glass on the screen, as last time. Budget phones are getting so good these days, you can't really tell apart the premium ones just by looking. The phone is quite thick, being 9.5 mm. While some might frown at the bulk, I really feel that the target customers of this phone will love the added grip onto that metal body. It's quite light in the hand and the thickness doesn't feel bulky at all!
Display: The phone has a great 5.2' 1080p IPS LCD panel. I say 'great' because the display is bright and vivid than other similarly priced phones. The viewing angles are good and it's pretty much visible outdoors too. That curved gorilla glass 3, provides some protection against scratches. Colors produced by this display are a bit on the cooler side, and whites appear a bit bluish. But it doesn't affect your viewing experience in any way, which is good.
Performance: The Blue life one x2 runs on a rather new processor. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octacore CPU clocked at 1.4 GHz along with 4 GB DDR3 RAM 😲.
There's a 2 GB RAM variant too, but I'm not interested in that. The 4 GB variant also has a great 64 GB onboard storage whereas the lighter variant has only 16 GB. There's expandability of course, but storage is never too much, right?😅 Performance is great on this device, it runs on a mostly stock variant of Android marshmallow, so it's smooth and stutter free for the most part. I think the UI is called Carefree UI😅, which does exactly as it sounds. You won't have any major concerns with the day to day performance with this phone. It's swift and respectably fast. It handles games like asphalt 8 quite well, with a few frame drops and stutters. It's surely not meant for gaming😆, but at least it doesn't heat up.
A new addition to the X2 than its predecessor is a fingerprint sensor. It's not a home button though. After unlocking, you still have to use on-screen navigation buttons. But it's quite fast I must say. It was pretty accurate, with only a few misreads. It's definitely a welcome addition to an already great phone. There are also a few gestures like double tap to wake, draw a C to launch camera etc. Some of these gestures can be quite handy, especually things like 'pocket mode' and 'double tap to sleep'.
Camera: The life one X2 has an upgraded 16 mp rear sensor and an 8 mp front snapper on it. Both cameras have flash and an f/2.0 aperture. The cameras are quite decent. They can produce pretty good looking photos with plenty of details in good lightning. In lower light, the camera clearly struggles to keep up with shifting light shades. But overall picture quality is quite acceptable. It's one of the better camera I've seen in the budget segments. For instance, it's slightly better than the Xiaomi redmi note 3's camera. The front camera has a brighter flash, which I suggest you turn off. It can be very bright and unpleasant to look at in dark environments. I wish there was a luminosity control within the camera app. The camera app by the way, is pretty fast and responsive. It's HDR mode takes quite a lot of time to capture a photo, but final results are ok. It brightens the shadows by cranking up the ISO. This might cause some grainy photos, so keep that in mind when you launch HDR mode.
Battery: This phone has quite a big battery compared to its younger sibling. It packs a 2900 mAh battery. It might seem lesser than the other 4000 mAh units we are seeing on some other China phones, but it could easily last through a day. Thanks to that energy effecient processor and low demanding UI, you'll get around 5 hrs of continuous usage from a single charge. There is Qualcomm Quickcharge 3.0, but there may not be a need for it, as you won't be looking for a charger during the lunch break, for sure👍.
Price: Now, the best part. The lighter specced 2 GB RAM variants costs the same $149!! If you want the better 4 GB RAM variant, which I recommend, you'll only have to pay $199. It's still moles cheaper than most other phones with similar specs. A great phone with a good display, nice optics and a great battery life under $200 will surely be a no-brainer for a lot of people. And I will encourage you to go for it, you won't be disappointed😎👌!
Design: The phone takes a premium turn from it's predecessor. The leather textured back is gone and is replaced with an aluminum unibody. The power and vilume buttons are in the right hand side, a headphone jack up top and a microUSB port in the bottom. There's also a speaker with an identically cut microphone grill. The phone also comes with the same 2.5D curved glass on the screen, as last time. Budget phones are getting so good these days, you can't really tell apart the premium ones just by looking. The phone is quite thick, being 9.5 mm. While some might frown at the bulk, I really feel that the target customers of this phone will love the added grip onto that metal body. It's quite light in the hand and the thickness doesn't feel bulky at all!
Display: The phone has a great 5.2' 1080p IPS LCD panel. I say 'great' because the display is bright and vivid than other similarly priced phones. The viewing angles are good and it's pretty much visible outdoors too. That curved gorilla glass 3, provides some protection against scratches. Colors produced by this display are a bit on the cooler side, and whites appear a bit bluish. But it doesn't affect your viewing experience in any way, which is good.
Performance: The Blue life one x2 runs on a rather new processor. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octacore CPU clocked at 1.4 GHz along with 4 GB DDR3 RAM 😲.
There's a 2 GB RAM variant too, but I'm not interested in that. The 4 GB variant also has a great 64 GB onboard storage whereas the lighter variant has only 16 GB. There's expandability of course, but storage is never too much, right?😅 Performance is great on this device, it runs on a mostly stock variant of Android marshmallow, so it's smooth and stutter free for the most part. I think the UI is called Carefree UI😅, which does exactly as it sounds. You won't have any major concerns with the day to day performance with this phone. It's swift and respectably fast. It handles games like asphalt 8 quite well, with a few frame drops and stutters. It's surely not meant for gaming😆, but at least it doesn't heat up.
A new addition to the X2 than its predecessor is a fingerprint sensor. It's not a home button though. After unlocking, you still have to use on-screen navigation buttons. But it's quite fast I must say. It was pretty accurate, with only a few misreads. It's definitely a welcome addition to an already great phone. There are also a few gestures like double tap to wake, draw a C to launch camera etc. Some of these gestures can be quite handy, especually things like 'pocket mode' and 'double tap to sleep'.
Camera: The life one X2 has an upgraded 16 mp rear sensor and an 8 mp front snapper on it. Both cameras have flash and an f/2.0 aperture. The cameras are quite decent. They can produce pretty good looking photos with plenty of details in good lightning. In lower light, the camera clearly struggles to keep up with shifting light shades. But overall picture quality is quite acceptable. It's one of the better camera I've seen in the budget segments. For instance, it's slightly better than the Xiaomi redmi note 3's camera. The front camera has a brighter flash, which I suggest you turn off. It can be very bright and unpleasant to look at in dark environments. I wish there was a luminosity control within the camera app. The camera app by the way, is pretty fast and responsive. It's HDR mode takes quite a lot of time to capture a photo, but final results are ok. It brightens the shadows by cranking up the ISO. This might cause some grainy photos, so keep that in mind when you launch HDR mode.
Battery: This phone has quite a big battery compared to its younger sibling. It packs a 2900 mAh battery. It might seem lesser than the other 4000 mAh units we are seeing on some other China phones, but it could easily last through a day. Thanks to that energy effecient processor and low demanding UI, you'll get around 5 hrs of continuous usage from a single charge. There is Qualcomm Quickcharge 3.0, but there may not be a need for it, as you won't be looking for a charger during the lunch break, for sure👍.
Price: Now, the best part. The lighter specced 2 GB RAM variants costs the same $149!! If you want the better 4 GB RAM variant, which I recommend, you'll only have to pay $199. It's still moles cheaper than most other phones with similar specs. A great phone with a good display, nice optics and a great battery life under $200 will surely be a no-brainer for a lot of people. And I will encourage you to go for it, you won't be disappointed😎👌!