The Vivo 8L is the latest smartphone from BLU. The first thing you should know about this phone is that it’s priced at $200. But for a limited time, it will be on sale for $50 on Amazon.
There’s only so much tech that can be cramped into a device with this price tag. BLU seems to have focused on the performance, cameras, and the battery life. But there are some other features that I’ll discuss that do make this a pretty well rounded smartphone. I’m not gonna lie, BLU does a pretty good job grabbing my attention with the spec to price ratio of its smartphones. Their parts aren’t as high-quality as the parts used in high-end Android smartphones but you get what you pay for and they are still a pretty good option for those looking for a budget smartphone.
The Vivo 8L is packing an Octa-Core MediaTek processor with 3GB of RAM and Android 7.0 Nougat on the software side of things. If you’re a fan of stock Android and Google Now launcher specifically, I think you’ll have a pleasant first impression experience because the app drawer is unchanged and Google Now is just one swipe to the right. What I don’t like so much is the skin’s notification drawer and quick settings which are in two different places. Notifications swipe down from up top and quick settings swipe up from the bottom. It really doesn’t make sense to me why BLU continues to use this skin in some of its smartphones after all these years.
Aside from that complaint, the phone runs well and should keep up with frequent social media usage, emails, and some light gaming. Don’t be surprised though if you do see some apps closing and stuttering when multi-tasking. I did experience those problems when first setting up this smartphone.
Next comes the cameras. The Vivo 8L packs a 13-megapixel Sony IMX 258 camera sensor with an f/2.0 aperture. Once again, for the price of this smartphone, it does perform pretty well. It does have some problems properly focusing on a subject, especially for macro photography. Also, noise can be expected in environments with inadequate lighting. That’s just what you get for what you pay for. But images with good lighting actually do look pretty sharp. What’s unusual to see is a 20-megapixel selfie camera with flash. If you’re a selfie enthusiast and you like taking Snapchats, you will love this smartphone.
Last but not least in the what’s good department, the battery. Under the hood is a 4000mAh battery with support for quick charging. And in my testing, I was able to get two days of moderate usage.
So those are the three big pros of this device. There are several other features that do help round out this smartphone. The build, it consists primarily of metal, so it does feel really good in the hands and provides a sense of wealth. The rear-mounted fingerprint scanner is in a natural place for my index finger and the scanner itself does work quickly to unlock the phone. We also have a microSD card slot for expandable storage and dual SIM card slots. That’s really rare to see in a smartphone these days.
In the not-so-good department, we have a 5.3-inch 720p display that gets the job done but it just starts to show its age when compared to much of the competition. With a sub 277ppi index and fairly basic LCD display, it just really doesn’t impress. The capacitive touch navigation buttons are also antiquated as they take up precious screen real estate. To make things worse, they cannot be reprogrammed and they are out of order. The back button should be on the far left with the overview button to the far right. But as you can see, that’s not the case.
Last but not least, the rear-facing speaker is fairly tinny and often gets muted by my palm when just holding the device. It should be, at the very least, be placed at the bottom of the smartphone preferably upfront so the audio is facing directly towards your face.
With all of that said, you can’t really expect too much for a smartphone that costs between $150 and $200 off-contract. The Vivo 8L is compatible with all GSM networks and BLU is selling this device for $150 for a limited time on Amazon.