Welcome back one and all. Fresh out of the gate today is BLU’s brand new flagship device, the Vivo 8. BLU stands for Bold Like Us, and this new iteration of the Vivo series is definitely bold. You may remember a previous review I did on the BLU R1 Plus, earlier in the year. I had a few hang ups with the previous device, but the Vivo 8 is in a class of its own among BLU’s devices, and by far, it is their most competitive model to date. It’s rocking a full 1080p display, 4GB of RAM, a fingerprint sensor built into the home screen (insert internal fist pump), and a flash on the front-facing selfie camera. Wanna learn more? Of course you do! Especially at the introductory price of $199, and a regular price of $299.
Pricing: Pricing and Specs are usually the first things I look for, so I’ll go ahead and share them with you. The MSRP is $299, but BLU has partnered with Amazon for an exclusive 48-hour sale, which means you can pick up one of these delightful phones for $199 USD, which is a great deal. The regular MSRP of $299 still makes the phone competitive, but not as attractive as the introductory offer. The Vivo 8 comes in two colors: black and gold.
Specs:
- An Octa-core MediaTek P10 Helio processor (and Mali GPU), clocked at a top end speed of 2.0ghz
- 4GB of memory
- a 5.5” curved display, with 1920x1080 full-HD resolution, made with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 (401ppi)
- A 4,010 mAh battery
- 64GB of internal storage (expandable; supports up to 64GB SD card)
- A 13MP main camera with Sony IMX sensor and LED flash
- A 16MP “Super Selfie” front-shooter, with LED flash (fancy!)
- Runs Android 7.0 Nougat
- Bonus --- it also comes with earphones, a clear TPU style case, and a screen protector (installation required)
Overview and Performance:
Having listed the price and specs, I think it’s fairly reasonable that this device is something to be excited about. I have had the opportunity to spend some time with this device leading up to the launch date and I have to admit, in the beginning, I had a few apprehensions. First and foremost, it has a MediaTek processor in it, and Sony has given me a terrible taste in my mouth for these chipsets. However, after firing the phone up and playing around with it, a couple of things helped change my mind. First, it’s not a Sony. Second, it’s very affordable. Third, it performs very well, especially for day-to-day usage and some light multitasking (you can even go split-screen mode!). For the price and the expectations that I had, I was very pleased with the smoothness of the user interface and performance during normal app usage. I tested it out on a couple of games and it definitely doesn’t have the straight-line speed of an 8xx series SnapDragon, but it’s also not supposed to. The P10 chipset is on par with the SnapDragon 625 series, which I have used on a daily basis in my BlackBerry KEYOne, as well as my Moto G5 Plus. All of them handle processing on pretty much the same tangible and appreciable playing field, with their not-so-subtle compromises on graphics intense games. It definitely doesn’t play War Robots or some more 3D intensive games very well, but touch and click style games work well – enter stage left, Boom Beach (yup. I’m still playing it), and Alto.
Display: Overall, I have been very impressed with the graphics. The color saturation is average, and the brightness is not disappointing. I have not been a huge fan of 1080p devices since UHD graphics came along, but that's mostly because I bounce around quite a bit in the higher-tier phone market where that is an expectation for me. 5.5” is actually a good screen size for 1080p, because the difference isn’t even noticeable to most people’s eyes. I’m not going to get into the science of it all, but 5.2” is the optimum size for a 1080p screen, and 5.5” isn’t stretching the envelope; increased resolution isn’t something that’s a selling point to me in this price range, but a 4,010mAh battery most certainly is.
Battery Life: The battery life on this phone is phenomenal. The P10 is a fairly fuel efficient chipset. I won’t go out on a limb and say it’s “better” than the SD 625 - which it is directly competing with - but the massive battery more than makes up for any minute compromises that you may think you're giving up by choosing this device. The closest mainstream comparison phone to the Vivo 8 is the Moto G5 Plus, which boasts a 3,000mAh battery. Both devices even utilize USB 2.0, which is a little bit dated, but not outside the realm of acceptability. The battery charging capability of the Vivo 8 is also best-in-class for BLU phones, supporting its own iteration of QuickCharge, called “SUPER CHARGE”, which will get your phone completely recharged in just two hours – if you can manage to kill it in a day.
Fingerprint Sensor: I am very happy that the Vivo 8 has incorporated a fingerprint sensor. When fingerprint sensors first came out, I hated them. They were slow, clumsy, and rarely worked on the first try. As they became more and more integrated into devices, I have found that I much prefer them to a pattern or pin passcode, and use them as my primary means of biometrics and security. I have never really cared for the fingerprint sensors that are mounted on the back of the phone. It seems like they’re never in the right place - especially on the new Samsung devices… With the Vivo 8, all of my fingerprint sensor dreams have come true, because not only is it a FPS, it’s also a home button! Yes, you can push down on it and get to the home screen (hooray). If you can’t tell, I’m very happy about this, and it works well. Honestly, it took a bit of a learning curve for me to get used to it because of the industry standard, where fingerprint sensors don’t’ function as home buttons, so pressing down on it was unintuitive. Now that I’m used to it, I’m very happy with it and wish that more phone manufacturers adopted this feature.
Sound: The sound on the phone is very good, and definitely better than many other phones off the shelf now-days, especially in this class of phone. The dual speaker setup on the phone is very much akin to the iPhone, and it works well. I especially like the downward firing speakers because the sound bounces right off of your hands, which directs the sound toward you when you're holding it. The volume is great, and it puts out some pretty good sound in the mid, to high range – the cello on the Game of Thrones intro sounds fantastic! The bass isn’t spectacular, but it works well for watching shows/movies and casual usage. Oh, and bonus…. It has a 3.5mm jack, which also makes me a happy camper. This recent trend of no headphone jack and requiring a converter is for the birds, unless you are lucky enough to have Bluetooth everything for all of your audio needs. If you’re a person who still likes to jam out with your 2015/16 era headphones or uses an auxiliary cord, you will definitely appreciate that BLU held onto this feature in the Vivo 8.
Camera: The camera on this phone is definitely good for taking casual photos, but it was built for selfies. One of the biggest selling points of this device is the fancy, and novel, LED flash setup on the front-facing selfie camera, which boasts an enormous 16MP camera, which happens to be larger than the 13MP rear camera, which is ok. It’s not a bad camera, and BLU went out of their way in an effort to step up their game and included a Sony IMX sensor into the design. The interface has a few novel gestures, such as swiping down on the screen to flip between the front and rear camera, which I have grown to love. Ok, back to the selfie camera; if you like filters, you are going to love this phone. I am not much of a selfie taker, but you can do all sorts of fun and cool things like night shot mode, slimming (well, cause why not?), whitening, and smoothing. I didn’t really find that any really helped my face look any better (funny, not funny), but they are cool if you feel like a little bit of photoshopping on the fly. There is also a built-in camera app called “Z Camera”, which allows you to get super fancy and put emoji’s and stickers on your photo, create collages, do picture-in-picture (PIP) photos, and much more (like adding different hair colors and sculpted muscle bound enhancements to your photos that you’ve always wanted at the touch of your fingertips) – you don’t even have to burn calories in the process. However, I have to say this… it’s full of ads and requires additional downloads within the app. On a bonus note, many of them are free.
Software: I know there are some existing hang-ups with their software and some security concerns, which culminated in their phones being pulled down from Amazon briefly, not too long ago. However, they were quickly put back up for sale, and the security issues were qualified by informing the public that the software suite is no longer installed on newer devices, and only applied to previous generation phones. So… they’re ok. I can’t vouch for the security versus a BlackBerry, Samsung or Google device, but I can’t say that about a lot of phones. I am happy to report that the device comes with Android 7.0 Nougat, which was a welcome surprise, especially since other mainstream devices still don’t have it. The inclusion of Android 7.0 definitely went a long way with me in helping to legitimize the efforts of BLU to appeal to a more mainstream audience. It still has their own little enhancements to the UI, to include swiping from the bottom to get to the menu settings, and the top-down swipe is reserved for notifications only. The stock android experience isn’t modified too much, but you will notice little enhancements or changes here and there.
Conclusion: All in all, I thoroughly enjoy using the Vivo 8, and I have no hesitation in recommending it. The Vivo 8 is a quality device that anchors itself very well within the competition, especially at the introductory price point of $199. I would highly recommend getting one at $199, but I can also make a solid argument for purchasing one at $299. Of course, I can also debate other phones as well. That’s one of the beauties of the mobile device industry. There are almost as many colors, shapes and sizes, as the day is long. We are mostly free to pick and choose our fancies among a wide spread of styles and manufacturers. However, if you’re looking for a great value, with excellent performance and an even better price tag, check out the Vivo 8.
Normally I do a Pro’s and Cons list at the end of the review, but I was so positive in many of the areas of the phone that I feel like a better explanation of some of the features I didn’t care for is in order.
Things I don’t like:
The buttons don’t light up, so you have to remember which side of the phone is for “back”, and “menu”. There are two little dots that represent where the buttons are, and unless I got a defective unit, they don’t light up.
The curved edge display. It sounds nice on paper, but it’s not really a selling point for this phone. The curve in the display is not very noticeable at all, unlike other manufacturers who has incorporated curved displays into their devices.
There is no app drawer. I really like app drawers (except for my brief romance with the EMUI setup on the Huawei P8 Lite I had a few years ago, which I really enjoyed). However, that season of my life is over and I have discovered that I am much happier with app drawers. I do not like my screen to be cluttered, and I am very deliberate in the way that I organized my icons. This was a turn off for me, but it’s mostly preference, and not anything “wrong” with the phone.
If you’re interested in picking up a Vivo 8 device, you can find them on Amazon’s website today, 30 August 2017, with exclusive pricing on Amazon for 48-hours, starting Thursday, August 31st through 11:59pm EST, on the 1st of September. The normal price is going to be $299, but during the 48-hour sale, they are discounting it by $100, for a grant total of $199. Here is the direct link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0731THWVC
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comments section.
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