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: 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]