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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: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @08:45AM
When you can buy a whole phone for less than $50, all those nerdy losers who know how to code apps must be fucking worthless. When the phone breaks, you throw it out and buy a new one. When the coders expect to be treated better than shit, you fire them and hire new ones.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @08:52AM
Granted it's only a tablet and not a phone.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/digiland-7-tablet-8gb-black/4306900.p [bestbuy.com]
(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]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday July 24 2016, @09:41AM
The total cost of this phone is $50 plus the advertisements. Note that this not only includes immaterial cost like annoyance and privacy, not to mention the time those ads cost you, but also very material cost like bandwidth you have to pay for, and energy usage, which also translates into cost.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:01AM
You pays another $50 for
the ad-free version of the phone starts at $99
and you stops your whining.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @02:30PM
The ads may stop for the extra $50 but Amazon tracking everything you do like you're something they own doesn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:17AM
How many hours can I blast FIGHT THE POWER at full volume before I need to recharge?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @10:52AM
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @05:36PM
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]
(Score: 5, Informative) by nyder on Sunday July 24 2016, @12:01PM
I bought the 2gb/16gb version for $59. It's an excellent phone for it's price. The ads aren't annoying, usually it's just 1 small notification size one on the lockscreen, unless you have no notifications, then it's a full screen one. As for games, I didn't find it sluggish for games like NFS Most Wanted, HIT, Pokemon Go and Ghostbusters Slimer. It does take a bit longer to load games then my tablet. In fact, I think Ghostbusters Slimer has locked up while it's loading because it takes like 2 mins to load up. Sword of Chaos is the only game that has slowdowns during play for me. Going to test Mortal Kombat X, but shit, it's 1.84gb. That won't be done by the time I'm done typing.
Screen is really bright and seems decent. My 4Glte on AT&T networks is working fine. The speaker is a bit sucky, and why are they always on the back side? I found the camera to be fine, I'm wondering if the reviewer didn't take the plastic piece off that was covering it? Might not of been that noticeable on his/her phone. And it has a headphone jack.
The review did review the 1gb/8gb version of the phone, which anyone in there right mind would of paid the $9 difference for the 2gb/16gb version.
As for getting root and removing the lockscreen, that is being worked on currently.
As for thinking amazon is spying on everything you do on the phone I want to point out some difference between this phone and their previous offerings. This run Android OS 6.0, the older fire phones/fire tablets/fire tv all run Fire OS, and amazon made fork of the android OS. So they have actually loosened up their control on this phone by a lot. Not saying that doesn't mean there isn't anything hidden, just saying it seems like they loosened the reigns on this phone.
Personally if you want a cheap phone that works beyond it's price point, not picking up a Blu R1 HD would be foolish. If you don't want the ads, pony up the extra $50, you are still getting a bargain. $109 for an unlocked phone that works with AT&T, T-Mobile & Verizon (supposedly, they list it), runs android 6, and has it's specs? worth it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fnord666 on Sunday July 24 2016, @01:43PM
Please note that this device does not currently support the new Voice over LTE (VoLTE) solution from T-Mobile, so network coverage may be limited in some T-Mobile Extended Range LTE locations.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bill Dimm on Sunday July 24 2016, @02:39PM
That's pretty important. I'm not an expert and haven't read the article, but I'm guessing that means that you can't use LTE band 12 because T-Mobile will block the band if it doesn't support voice (the Honor 5X has the same problem -- the hardware supposedly supports band 12 but you can't actually use it). It's my understanding that a lot of T-Mobile's build-out is band 12. On the T-Mobile website they refer to band 12 as "Extended Range LTE" if you want to check the coverage difference (which may change over time).
The specs for the Blu R1 HD don't sound any better than the Samsung On5 that you can get from T-Mobile (prepaid) or MetroPCS for $60. The On5 supports band 12.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2016, @05:06PM
That's not a good thing, considering TMobile's coverage looks like an interstate highway map.