Gadgetory

right off the bat 2016 is looking to be a great year for consumers who are looking for premium built phones for a low cost now blue just released two new smartphones the blue vivo XL which we have already reviewed here on Android authority and the blue vivo 5 which is what I have right here it is a more premium version and it cost a little more but only for $1.99 you do get a lot here so let's see if the blue vivo 5 is worth picking up design is a main story here and by far the most interesting aspect of the blue vivo 5 due to its metal built unlike its Big Brother the blue vivo XL the entire backing and size of the phone are made of metal with these nice chamfered edges and when feeling the phone and maneuvering it around in your hand you'll feel that the metal used here is actually pretty high-quality or at least it feels like it it doesn't feel like it's going to get scratched as easily as other aluminum phones and it's really a beautiful design especially in this cheek gold color we have although you can pick it up in liquid silver as well like past blue vivo phones these devices remain very thin however each year blue plumps up their view lineup a little making this year's vivo five six point nine millimeters thin it's still very thin and feels really great to hold especially with it being very lightweight at 141 grams it's ever so slightly rounded on the back which helps with your grip and overall when it comes to feel in the hand the blue vivo 5 is one of the best on the market right now another big selling point blue is trying to push is it's big 5.5 inch Super AMOLED display colors are very saturated here which I do think looks very nice and with this being an AMOLED panel you can expect the blacks to be as black as they can get it's really great making these icons pop over the vivo 5's default black background White's do up your pretty pink though which is normal for a lot of AMOLED panels and overall these color profiles and features of the AMOLED screen would make for a fantastic viewing experience but it's hampered by the vivo 5 s low resolution we're only talking 720p here and for a screen of this size you will definitely notice some pixelation going on even when holding the phone a good distance away a 5.5 inch display at 720p comes to a pixel density of only 267 PPI text can be very fuzzy at times depending on its size which will be annoying for some and besides the low resolution though the mix of this AMOLED screen with punched up colors can still make for a great video watching but when it comes to reading text you may have some trouble so with this being a 200-dollar device you're not going to expect the blue vivo 5 to bring the fastest performance but given its specs I had no problem doing almost anything we have immediate X 60 7:53 octa-core processor with a Mallee T 720 GPU and three gigs of RAM which is very nice to see in a phone at this price range the phone runs very smoothly actually with animation stuttering very rarely jumping in and out of apps is quite fast although with very slight pauses when dealing with the recent apps screen I drew the phone to some benchmarks with Geekbench giving it a pretty low score of two thousand eight hundred and fifty and antutu giving it a score of thirty eight thousand and nine even gaming holds up quite well with very few drop frames here and there in more graphic intensive games I was impressed with the vivo files performance it runs very well battery life is great as well with this three thousand one hundred and fifty milliamp non-removable battery no it's not removable like the excel but with this decent sized battery energy efficient processor AMOLED display and more importantly low resolution screen I could easily make the phone last a full day all night while sleeping and the next morning part of this is due to its intelligent standby power saving mode which is on by default my screen on time for the blue vivo 5 averaged about 6 hours of screen on time which for me is excellent charging the phone is great thanks to the USB type-c connector found on the bottom yes you'll have to use different cables but due to USB type-c being reversible there'll be a lot less fumbling around especially in the dark as you charge up for the night besides this charge times are pretty fast too given the phone's battery capacity no you won't find any fingerprint scanner here or even NFC but you will find the dual SIM card tray with 32 gigs of internal storage which is very nice given the price and if that's not enough you have access to a micro SD card slot that supports up to 64 gigs of storage the speaker is found on the bottom right and actually sounds really good it gets pretty loud and even at max volume there seems to be no problem with the sound being muffled or even distorted it lacks a lot of base but the mids and highs seem to be mixed perfectly now blue has been known for really tinkering with their software on their phones for quite some time which lit a lot of users but their last release seemed to be moving towards a better direction with a more slim down skin the app drawer returning and stock notification pull downs and menus however with the blue vivo 5 it appear they have taken a step backward with a very heavily skinned version of Android lollipop 5.1 of course some people love this and some people will not it really all depends on which phone you're coming from but this redesign is quite different from a lot of phones on the market first off the app drawer is gone so you'll have to resort to placing every single app on your home screen folder making is a must here the notification menu is very simple and looks very clean although there is no setting button here in fact there's no quick settings for anything this is just a notification panel if you want to access your quick settings you'll have to pull up from the bottom and if you get used to this it can help keep things a little more organized but I did find myself accidentally pulling this up from time to time or sometimes struggling to make it appear but like I said everything runs very smoothly although there are no lockscreen notifications and sometimes the phone would refuse to chime when unifications arrived making me miss a lot of my notifications and even my text I'm not really sure why this would happen but a simple restart usually fix a problem the reach an app screen is more familiar without much skinning at all which is nice and while we're here it's worth noting that the recent apps button is capacitive along with the home and back button although the back button and recent apps button have been flipped which can take some time getting used to customizing your home screen is very simple easily allowing widgets and transition effects to be chosen in the theme app you can change how your wallpaper and apps look with a lot of dark options which really suits this AMOLED panel so yeah now all the rescan is bad but here in the US it will take lots of users some time to get used to the pulldown redesigns and lack of an app drawer but of course installing the third-party launcher can help solve some of these problems the 13 megapixel camera on the blue vivo 5 is quite good for a phone of its price range it doesn't have any optical image stabilization and is just your average budget phone camera spec sheet LED flash along with a 5 megapixel wide-angle selfie camera pictures aren't bad at all in good lighting the colours aren't too saturated and it can be prone to overexposing and can struggle with dynamic range in the shadows HDR can help but oftentimes won't actually create a more appealing photo all of this being said photos still look very good indoors some grain will show and of course in a tough shot like this the camera slower shutter speed can cause moving objects to blur but for the most part images still come out very nice in dark areas the camera can be very hit or miss it all has to do with how steady you can keep your hands as a camera's shutter speed becomes very slow to compensate for loss of light most of the time your shot will become blurry but every once in a while you'll capture something perfectly video quality is decent for what it is it's what you would expect from a $200 smartphone camera with lots of overexposing and constant exposure changes and it can also be pretty shaky the front-facing camera actually has a good amount of detail but when you're not in direct sunlight you will start to notice some grain overall for $200 phone to support this camera and for it to perform as well as it did in these crazy tests I put it through there is nothing to complain about here at the end of the day this is a $200 smartphone that feels like a flagship that cost triple its price the build quality on this thing is incredible with its metal build thin body and light weight for a phone of this price you'll be more than happy with this camera it's USB type-c support great battery life and 5.5 inch AMOLED screen although you may get tired of the low resolution very quickly as well as the over skinned software is it worth picking up well for the build quality alone I would say yes it's great for the price but even with this year just beginning we're already starting to see phones in the price range offer a little more like fingerprint scanners and higher resolution 5.5 inch screens that being said you won't find a more premium designed phone for $200 and for that price you can't go wrong with the blue vivo 5 and that's the end of the review thanks for watching comment below and let me know what you think of the blue vivo 5 do you guys think is worth $1.99 don't forget to check out our website and your authority comm for the full in-depth review where we really going to detail and as always stay tuned and subscribe because we are your source for all things Android