i finally ordered the BLU vivo air lte from amazon for $140 and here's my mini review.
BLU doesnt make any phones, the company rebadges from chinese companies. in this case, the vivo air lte is a variant of Gionee Elife series.
first impression, it is beautiful and feels premium. amazing look and feel for a phone that costs $140. front and back glass, a fall will probably shatter this phone instantly. the phone is 5.1 mm and feels super light weight. i have never hold any phone that is this light. you barely feel it is there in the front pants pocket. you probably could hold it up to your ears all day talking without fatigue.
wife loves it! unfortunately, she cant use it. currently she is on Republic Wireless for $15 per month. the BLU phone is a GSM phone with nano SIM card. Cricket refuses to port her RW number in because Cricket thinks her number is a landline. she doesnt want to lose her mobile number. long story short, im using my cricket sim card with this BLU phone and love it! people are amazed and more shocked when i divulge the price.
pros
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+ fast and very responsive with this Qualcom 4xx chip. on a daily basis, i use the phone for emails, chat, txt with swype, google maps, reading news on firefox, and looking at family photos and videos. no lag
+ 2,000mah battery lasts easily 2 days with mix of wifi/lte on all day. i was amazed! although to be honest, im not a phone addict. im not constantly looking at social media. and i dont play games. compared to my asus zenphone 2 with 3,000mah, that would last 1.3 day.
+ its says the camera sensor is from Sony. but i never use phones to take photos nor video. DSLR 4 life. to me, all photos taken from smartphones are lousy anyway.
+ amoled screen is amazing! black is black. 720p is all i need for basic tasks. i know 4k screen snobs here will laugh at me.
cons
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- no NFC. not a biggie for me since i never care for it. dont care about mobile payments
- no QuickCharge. even though the chip supports QC, the phone takes about 2hrs to fully charge. i miss this feature a lot! guess i will leave it charging overnight.
- no wireless charging
- as others have mentioned here and other forums, no future support. phone is now on android 5.0.2. im ok with this as im not using this for work nor secured things like banking.
- no expandable memory mSD slot. stuck with 16gb. better beef up wifi coverage for streaming instead of having all the music and videos on a 64gb card
- no way to change battery. damn.
- most likely not waterproof
3 years ago, the chinese phones i tried were mediocre. but this BLU version is truly amazing. if you are not a power user, this might be the phone for you.