BLU
Vivo Air
The
BLU Vivo Air stands out primarily for its super svelte profile of 5.1 mm, making
it one of the slimmest smartphones. As a measure of just how thin this phone
is, take a look at the 3.5 mm headphone jack on the bottom. It's offset, slightly
closer to the back than the front. The capacitive back button is stacked
directly over the headphone jack, pushing it down by a fraction and moving it
off the front/back centerline. Amusingly, the sheath at the end of the
headphones plug is actually thinner than the phone itself. Also on the bottom
you'll find a dead-center Micro USB port and a pinhole for the microphone.
The
front of the device is equally clean and spartan, if perhaps a little dated. It
is, naturally, dominated by the Super AMOLED display, a 4.8-inch panel with a
resolution of 720x1280. The screen itself was fairly solid, with AMOLED's
signature deep blacks and vibrant hues, although unlike some other
manufacturer's panels the Vivo Air's was fairly well balanced in not being too saturated.
Instead
of a top-tier or even mid-range Qualcomm processor inside you'll find the
MediaTek MT6592, an octa-core chip clocked at 1.7 GHz. It's paired with an ARM
Mali-450 GPU, 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of storage (with no microSD expansion). There's a standard assortment of Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11n radios,
but the cellular communications top off at HSPA+, and even that's limited to
the 21 Mbps version.
You
also can't get to the battery, but that'll be less of an issue for the average
user. The 2100 mAh battery easily got me through a full day of moderate use,
leaving 30% or more life when bedtime rolled around, although heavy game or
streaming media use can certainly drain it before the day ends.
Even
the Vivo Air's cameras are solid. The back camera is rated at 8 megapixels and
captures worthwhile snapshots: clear, mostly colorful images in strong
lighting, and decent low-light results as well. Nothing amazing, but it's
better than expected for the price. The main camera can also shoot 1080p video,
while the front camera provides a better-than-average 5 megapixels to work with for selfies.
The
Blu Vivo Air is a solid budget phone that has a surprising high-end sensibility
about it. Granted, not every part of the experience lives up to that billing:
the UI skin is clunky and unattractive, storage is limited, and there's no LTE
support. But swap in a better launcher (or less aggressive skin theme) and it's
easy to appreciate the quality screen, as well as decent camera and battery
life. There's enough here to make the Vivo Air a worthwhile US$ 200 phone with
caveats, so if it grabs your eye, know that there's more to it than just the
pretty face.
