Blu Phones?

[midwestfisherman]

I'm looking for a reasonably priced phone for my niece and am considering a Blu phone. Not sure which model yet. In general are these reliable phones? My niece does not need anything too demanding, typical teenage phone usage.

 

[s44]

Don't expect updates. Why not, say, Moto G LTE?

 

[paperwastage]

Budget and carrier?

Lg g2 is hard to beat for a (still) high end modern phone, on sale often $150-$200

Moto e/g is mid range and good price/feature ratio ($100-$200)

Lumia 635 is low end cheap starter smartphone at $50. Windows phone though

 

[notposting]

Android: probably best Moto afforded.
Windows: best Lumia afforded (bonus, no nudey Snapchats)
Apple: pffffft, or a used one off eBay

 

[notposting]

Lumia 635 is low end cheap starter smartphone at $50. Windows phone though

Do the newer variants, 535/640/730, better everything(s) across the board. They normalized memory at a gig, better screens (the Clearblack makes a big difference outside), flash for camera (or flashlight), etc.

edit: the 530/635 were in the awful merger transition and really sucked.

 

[paperwastage]

Do the newer variants, 535/640/730, better everything(s) across the board. They normalized memory at a gig, better screens (the Clearblack makes a big difference outside), flash for camera (or flashlight), etc.

edit: the 530/635 were in the awful merger transition and really sucked.

yeah, but then you'll have to spend >$120 for those, and I'd rather pay for a LG G2 at that point (unless you really want a windows phone)

 

[midwestfisherman]

I use a Lumia 635 and am about ready to switch to an Android phone. I like the phone itself but, the Windows phones are just lacking too many app options for me to continue with one personally. For that reason I don't want to give my niece a Windows phone.

As far as budget Max $200. Carrier, I'd prefer to stick with AT&T or T-Mobile or one of their variants.

 

[uallas5]

I just picked up a BLU Win HD 5 for $95 refurb to use as a music player, backup/overseas phone, offline GPS, etc. and I must say I'm pretty impressed. Is it as nice as my company S5, well no, but even the non-refurbs are 1/5th the cost off that.

The build quality is quite good, 1Gb of RAM is plenty for WP 8.1, haven't encountered any slowdowns or hiccups. Battery life is very good with the caveat that I don't have service to this phone, just Wifi. This weekend it was fully charged in the morning then I used it to read email, browse the web, read the news, install some apps, track a 3.5 mile walk with my dog, play around with some videos, read on the Kindle app, and then stream music while hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker for 3 hours (with the screen on for a large chunk of that time) and still had about 30% battery remaining. It comes with screen protectors and a simple gel case, which will be good for your niece. The phone itself is slim and light but not too light and looks rather good. The screen is crisp with good colors.

The big con would be the camera. Some of the Amazon reviews said the pics would be real washed out and they are. Pics I took with a digital camera on my honeymoon 12 years ago look better. Other than that the only other thing is sometimes the screen a little too responsive with swipes being interpreted as presses. Oh and this is the non-LTE version. Since I won't really use this much as a phone except for traveling to places like Aruba (where the offline maps can be handy) I wasn't worried about paying the extra for the LTE version.

Even though i can't speak to call quality, I hope this helps. I'd say from what I experienced so far, getting a Blu as a reasonably priced phone would not be a bad choice.

This is the one I got:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NQGFQ7C/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=

 

[poofyhairguy]

As far as budget Max $200. Carrier, I'd prefer to stick with AT&T or T-Mobile or one of their variants.

We call that phone the G2 around these parts.

 

[sm625]

"typical teenage phone usage" means lots of silly games that drain the battery like its nothing. So that means you want a used Galaxy S4 with a zerolemon 7500mAh battery case. Total cost is like $180 and the thing lasts forever! I have a huge battery in my phone and one of those games will drain my battery in 2 hours, but the phone combination I just mentioned will run that same game for 8 hours straight. Its insane. No top end smartphone will run a typical battery eating game for more than 4 hours.

 

[isekii]

I use a Lumia 635 and am about ready to switch to an Android phone. I like the phone itself but, the Windows phones are just lacking too many app options for me to continue with one personally. For that reason I don't want to give my niece a Windows phone.

As far as budget Max $200. Carrier, I'd prefer to stick with AT&T or T-Mobile or one of their variants.

Are you using it with ATT ? or T-mobile or MVNO?

 

[midwestfisherman]

Are you using it with ATT ? or T-mobile or MVNO?

My 635 is on AT&T.

 

[isekii]

My 635 is on AT&T.

You can pick up some nice phones on the cheap through cricket. Since it's no contract you can cancel right away. (for the discounted price you have to port in though and pay 1 month service).

Metro also has some nicely priced prepaid phones you can unlock pretty easily.

 

[Artdeco]

IMHO, they're junk, I'd buy used anything in a heartbeat instead.