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Tom's Guide reports
Blu R1 HD Review: Great for $50, with a Catch
The good
- Superaffordable
- Sleek design
- Bright [5-inch, 1280 x 720] display
- Good battery life
The bad
- Amazon ads are annoying
- Blurry camera
- Has trouble with graphic-intensive apps
[...] This budget Android device can be had for as low as $49 unlocked, but that price is only available for Amazon Prime members who are willing to look at all kinds of Amazon offers and promotions every time they open the lock screen.
[...] Packing a quad-core, 1.3-GHz MediaTek 6735 ARM Cortex processor with [1 GB] of RAM, the Blu R1 HD is powerful enough for basic tasks, but not great for resource-intensive apps. It never slowed me down during my day-to-day activities, whether I was checking messages, jumping between apps, or watching videos on YouTube or Amazon Video.
However, it's not ideal for the highest-end games in the Play Store. The gory, graphically intense action of Mortal Kombat X was playable but noticeably chuggy on the R1. The game also took quite a while to load, but, to be fair, I wasn't expecting stellar gaming performance from a $50 device.
[...] If you'd rather not succumb to your Amazon overlords, the ad-free version of the phone starts at $99 for the 8GB/1GB model, and costs $109 for the 16GB/2GB model.
[...] One big caveat: [For] carriers, it only works with AT&T and T-Mobile.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @09:22AM
This is an advertising device that happens to make phone calls. No doubt that Amazon have some cute custom code that tracks and reports everything you do back to Amazon so they can shove more ads down your throat.
I can't wait to hear:
- sorry I missed your call but the ads played longer than the ringer.
- I'm not ignoring your texts, I'm just waiting for the ads to finish.
- I tried to call 911 but the ads went on so long the house burned down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @09:38AM
- I tried to call 911 but the ads went on so long the house burned down.
Good news, Abuelo! Consumer Cellular sells emergency flip phones for $30. [consumercellular.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @09:31PM
Abuelo == Grandpa
...and cheap phones for making 911 calls have been a thing for a lot of years. [google.com]
In fact, I would think that in the typical techie's circle of acquaintances there would be someone with an old phone in a drawer who would let you have that for a song.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 25 2016, @12:09AM
In case you missed it, Consumer Cellular markets toward seniors specifically. They even sell a device you can wear which will detect when you've fallen and can't get up.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday July 25 2016, @06:24AM
I bought a Samsung flip phone from Walmart for $12. It's dumb as a rock, but works just fine as a phone.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday July 24 2016, @05:52PM
I tried to call 911 but the ads went on so long the house burned down.
See also New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users' Ears [youtube.com]