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This $50 Android Smartphone may be the Best Deal in Tech

posted by cmn32480 on Sunday July 24 2016, @08:36AM   
from the cheap-but-not-"cheap" dept.

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

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.

---

Original Submission

• This is what happens when you don't log in. This is what happens when you don't log in. (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:52AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:52AM (#379360)

  This gewg_ story shilling for Amazon has my bullshit meter pegged. The real gewg_ has got to be in a politburo meeting or burying some communards who died from famine.

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• ''shilling for Amazon'' (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @05:36PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @05:36PM (#379438)

  Some applicable themes:
  - Expanding number of methods of affording consumer gear
  - Lower and lower cost of ever-more-powerful devices
  - Example of the lower edge of a wide range of available devices
  - Expectations and actual capabilities of low-end gear

  You haven't been paying attention to the relatively wide range of topics that interest me (even if those do tend to trend in the empower-Joe-Average direction).
  N.B. I did kinda throw up in my mouth a little when submitting something that seems to speak well of Amazon.

  ...and, if YOU think the single example mentioned was too narrow a sample, YOU could have included some competing items|plans of which YOU are aware.

  This also gave nyder (below) an opportunity to further describe the device as an example of its type.

  The caveat by Fnord666 (below) also points to a gotcha of these sorts of offerings.

  .
  ...and the Communards didn't die of famine.
  They were the victims of mass murder by the elites and their mercenaries reoccupying liberated, Socialist Paris (1871) with guns blazing at anyone who would offer a working alternative to selfish, exploitative Capitalism.

  Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" describes similar events in Spain in 1936.

  -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  Parent