Gadgetory

although you may not have heard of blue before the company offers unlocked off-contract smartphones at very affordable prices based out of Miami Blue is a small company with high aspirations one of their more recent devices to hit the market is the blue selfie a device designed specifically to take good-looking selfies so how does the blue selfie stack out next to the budget friendly competition this is Bailey Stein with Android authority and this is my full review of the blue selfie the blue selfie brings around the most unique smartphone designs to the table the shape alone is a bold departure from normal and makes the phone look like a concept device from the past that came to light that's definitely not a bad thing though is the selfie is both unique and eye-catching with it subtly curved polycarbonate plastic back and brushed metal band the blue selfie not only looks great but also feels great in the hand the matte plastic finish is reminiscent of the material used on the HTC Droid DNA it resists fingerprints well it can also be the victim of minor discoloration after using the device for less than two weeks I noticed that the chin of the phone where the plastic wraps around to meet with the displaced glass had started to turn a very faint blue this may just be a problem with the white model but it is something to consider if you put your phone in your pocket frequently rubbing the region with a damp cloth it does seem to help but does not fully restore the original color the golden accents found on the camera ring and metal band complement the design nicely the tapered meeting point between the plastic back metal band and display also looks very nice and gives the phone a professional look as competition in the budget smartphone space continues to heat up it's really nice to see a company delivering something truly different and unique there were many people who noticed that too as I kept getting asked which phone I was using when I told people about the device their reaction was overall mostly positive with had said boost choice of shape and determination to pack to Sony IMX 135 cameras does have a couple of drawbacks the device is on the slightly thicker side at nine point six millimeters and the phone does have a tendency to wobble a bit it's not a major problem but it can be enough to make you adjust how you use your phone at a desk or a table there's also a considerable amount of bezel front which accommodates to the devices shape that's not really a big deal in terms of aesthetics but it does make the device pretty tall although I have no trouble reaching horizontally across the screen reaching to the top can be a challenge at times and that's not because of a large display either in fact the blue selfies display is just 4.7 inches compared to the Moto X 2014 which has a 5.2 inch display the blue selfie is skinnier but noticeably taller the good news is that the bezel on the top at least leaves room for the 13 megapixel front facing camera earpiece sensors and flash I think that the extra bezel is a compromise that many people who are interested in this phone will take so it's not really detrimental to the design the capacitive keys at the bottom have plenty of illumination for indoor and outdoor environments the home button also doubles as a notification LED eliminating the need for an extra light at the top of the phone like many of blue smartphones the blue selfie has a dual sim dual standby device popping out the SIM tray on the top right side of the phone reveals the dedicated area for a micro SIM card on the left and a shared area for either a nail SIM card or micro SD card on the right I think blues implementation here is really cool since it gives you the choice of using either a micro SD or nano SIM in the same slot the only thing to keep in mind is that you'll need to get an adapter if you want to use a nano SIM card and a micro SD card and also that you'll only be able to use a single SIM card if you want expandable storage regardless the option to add up to 64 gigabytes with a micro SD card to 16 gigabytes of internal storage is a great addition on the left side of the phone you'll find the volume buttons which are positioned well to not get in the way while using the phone the power button is on the top right of the phone and could be difficult to reach for some users the phone is really tall too making dropping the phone while trying to unlock it a serious concern so why didn't it blue just put the power button on the rights of the phone well in addition to the sim and micro SD card slot a camera shutter button lives on the centre right side of the device what's unfortunate about the camera button is that it only works when the phone's display is on in other words you can just press and hold the button to launch the camera when the phone is locked you actually have to press the power button first and then press and hold the camera button to launch the camera app the logic behind this confuses me since you can also just swipe left on the lock screen to open the camera at the same speed as the physical button because it doesn't speed up the amount of time it takes to actually launch the camera app I can't really see the buttons usefulness you could argue that it could be used to take a picture while the camera app is open but that's also not really a great option since the button is in the center and not on the bottom or top of the edge if I can make a single change to the hardware I would replace this camera run with a power button instead to conclude the headphone jack is on the top left and the charging port is on the bottom left luckily these ports are positioned at an angle so you won't be limited by the phone's housing in terms of what you can plug in the 4.7 inch 720p display on the blue selfie looks pretty good overall and has decent sunlight readability the colors are accurate and the viewing angles are good it's not as sharp as phones with 1080p displays obviously but it's still a great looking panel and this size the upgrade to 1080p wouldn't be all that apparent since it's already at 312 PPI and I actually think that many users will prefer the lower resolution because of the superior battery life that offers thankfully the display is coated in Corning Gorilla Glass 3 which helps it resist scratches if you're still worried about scratching the display blue has you covered with an included screen protector in the box when it comes to performance the blue selfie performs well for the price with a mediatek mt6752 its general day-to-day performance is comparable to phones with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 scoring a 33 thousand 4 + n - 2 + 449 single core 2494 multi-core and Geekbench the benchmark scores are reasonably good for this price the processor is a bit outdated having been released in late 2013 but it's certainly more than enough for a budget device with two gigs of RAM the selfie is fast enough for much of what the average user uses their phone for there were times when the phone would stutter a bit when scrolling well that's where the performance issues ended despite the Mali 450 GPU also starting to show its age it handled graphic intensive games like asphalt 8 and balloons tower defense 5 well it does help that the GPU only has to push a 720p display but I think that the average gamer will be satisfied with the gaming performance on this device the United States model of the blue selfie supports gsm quad band in ages PA + 8 15 1919 is that the phone will always work with HSPA+ or 4G on AT&T network and 2g + t-mobile's network since t-mobile has recently refund the majority of their HSPA+ network to the 1900 band you may also receive HSPA+ speeds in certain areas it's not fully supported though but should work in many metropolitan areas the major disappointment for many people will be the lack of 4G LTE support so you'll have to decide whether it's worth the compromise in addition to GSM carrier support the blue selfie also supports gps 802 11 and Wi-Fi and bluetooth 4.0 the speaker is on the bottom of the back of the phone and it sounds fairly decent it does seem to be loud enough but also gets noticed we distorted at full volume the cameras on the blue selfie are kind of a big deal blue seems to be very resolute on marketing the 13 megapixel Sony IMX 135 cameras used on both the front and back of the selfie and while Sony sensors are usually pretty good the cameras on this phone are unfortunately disappointing the camera software is pretty simple to use with options in the settings to adjust white balance and image quality normal and panoramic shooting modes and a few beauty enhancement techniques for example you can make your eyes look bigger slim your face smooth your skin or whiten your skin it's really just up to you on how you use these tools the rear camera is surrounded by dual flash one on each side of the very large sensor these are really bright though so bright that they often make low-light photos look worse for outdoor daylight images the blue selfie does take some decent looking images but if you zoom in even just a little bit you'll start to notice out-of-focus objects and excessive knowings the rear facing camera does seem to have problems focusing the slow shutter speed often leads to poor results due to shakiness the overall quality is okay but a lot of the images that I took despite being large 13 megapixel shots lacked color had objects out of focus and had excessive amounts of knowings the front-facing camera is placed on the center of the bezel at the top of the phone and the single flash is below the screen towards the right the front-facing flash is what blu calls glam flash and it's designed to offer just the right amount of light when you need it the most I am very happy with the Flash's brightness level it's bright enough to illuminate my face but it's not blinding when taking a selfie it does sometimes take up to four seconds to finally capture an image with the flash on so you have to be extremely still if you want to increase the chances of your selfies being in focus overall I would say that the front-facing camera takes just average looking selfies except at a larger 13 megapixels and while that may be useful for zooming most selfies just go through compression anyways when uploaded to social media services like Instagram snapchat Facebook or Twitter the blue selfie includes a built-in 2300 milliamp battery which offers surprisingly great battery life during the three days of real-world battery life I had no trouble getting the phone to last throughout a full day of use with just over three and a half hours of screen on time each day just to be clear my day lasts from 7 a.m. in the morning to 1:00 a.m. the next day the lower resolution display power-efficient mediatek chip and lack of LTE he helped the phone but I also think that Blu deserves some credit for software optimization I have tested phones with the same resolution and processor both larger batteries and I've had trouble getting other devices to last past 9 p.m. with more than 3 hours of screen on time if there's one area where this phone really shines it's got to be the battery life Blu has shipped the selfie with Android 4.4.2 kitkat there is unfortunately no official plans to update the device to Android 5.0 lollipop which is very sad as the phone was just released however blue is still supporting the device with bug fixes and general improvement over the are updates the actual software experience is very close to stock without any additional skins third-party keyboards or strange lock screens the only notable change blue has made the software is the inclusion of their my home launcher this launcher does not include an app drawer which is pretty weird coming from devices that do the stack system app icons are also all replaced with custom icons and third-party app icons have circles editor on the edges but luckily that's only in the system launcher you can restore the more familiar stack experience by downloading a launcher like the Google now launcher once downloaded the phone looks exactly like how stock Android would with a default app icons and familiar launcher experience the blue selfie is available in white black and blue with 16 gigabytes of internal storage for 249 dollars in the United States the global model should be the exact same except with the 850 2100 bands instead of the 850 1900 bands although the blue selfie has a unique design great display an excellent battery life it's difficult to recommend for a device marketed to take great-looking images the blue selfie is pretty disappointed there's also no word on a lollipop update which makes me wonder if the device will be stuck on KitKat forever don't get me wrong the blue selphie is a great phone for the price but there are just better options available phones like the Asus zenfone 2 or Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 offer better user experiences for the same price or lower prices even I do really like how the selfie is unique and different but it falls behind the competition when it comes to overall experience thank you for watching this video and please make sure to give it a thumbs up below if you found it helpful or informative also make sure to subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more content and feel free to leave a comment below finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all things Android