For families looking for affordable phones for their children, there are now telephones in the $ 100 range that can almost pass through landline telephones. The Blu Vivo XL3 now costs $ 109.99 for 24 hours on Amazon. Blu is also launching an additional Blu Vivo XL3 Plus phone.
Both are cheap phones, and with today's discount, there are no other phones in their price range that have similar characteristics but are not very similar. Both are almost non-bezel and have advantages like a fingerprint sensor, decent storage options, and the Vivo XL3 runs on the latest version of Android. They are not laggy phones with cheap-looking designs, but they are really good imitations of $ 900 phones.
I've been testing the Blu Vivo XL3 since mid-March and discovered that if I did not have an iPhone 8 Plus and was buying on a budget, this phone would have served me well. With a Mediatek 6737 processor and a Mali-T729 GPU, the phone opens applications quickly in Android 8.0 Oreo, without much delay. It also does not come with many unnecessary applications or extra smart wizards, and it has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, which is not bad for a $ 100 budget phone. You can also add a microSD card for an additional 64GB of storage.
Still, at such a low price, the Blu Vivo XL3 is not without flaws. It has a 13-megapixel front selfie camera that feels blurry and disappointing, while its 13-megapixel rear camera is similar. The 3,000 mAh battery of the Vivo XL3 runs out quickly for a day, even if you do not open any applications or even touch the phone.
The XL3 has a 5.5-inch high-definition screen with a resolution of 720 x 1440 and an aspect ratio of 18: 9. The images on the screen appear quite blurry, probably partly due to the low pixel density of 293 ppi of the phone. (The iPhone 8 Plus, which has the same screen size, has a density of 401 ppi, and Android phones are often higher).
But from the design point of view, the phone could go through an Android flagship from afar. It has an edge-to-edge screen, volume and power buttons on the right and a fingerprint sensor on the back. It also does facial recognition, which works without problems but requires a bit more configuration effort.
Meanwhile, the Blu Vivo XL3 Plus has a 6-inch screen with the same screen, RAM and storage specifications. Instead of a Mediatek processor, it has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor and an Adreno 308 GPU. While we could not test the Vivo XL3 Plus, from the looks and specifications, it seems to be a slightly polished version of the Vivo XL3. Its front camera accelerates up to 16 megapixels, while its battery size remains the same. But, interestingly, the Vivo XL3 Plus runs Android 7.1 Nougat instead of Oreo. We have contacted Blu to see why this is the case.
Currently, the Vivo XL3 costs $ 109.99 on Amazon, and the Plus costs $ 129.99. After 24 to 48 hours, Blu says the promotions will end and that the phones will cost $ 179.99 and $ 199.99. For budget phones like these, the price is crucial. On the spectrum side of $ 200, there are many worthy competitors for Blu phones with better specifications in many cases, such as the Nokia 6 or the Moto G5S Plus. But in the range of $ 100, these phones have a decent value and are not at all mocked.