Specifications:
- Display: 5.5 inches, IPS, FullHD;
- Processor: MTK Helio P25 eight cores, 2.5 GHz + video accelerator ARM Mali-T880 MP2;
- RAM: 4/6 GB;
- internal memory: 64/128 GB + micro SD flash cards up to 256 GB;
- camera: main – dual module 13+3 MP, front – 5 MP;
- communications: 4G LTE, Wi-Fi (802.11 ac), Bluetooth 4.2 LE, GPS, NFC;
- battery: 3500 mAh;
- dimensions: 148.6 x 74.13 x 7.9 mm;
- weight:175 g.
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Communication and Internet
The smartphone is capable of working with two SIM cards, as well as in 2G, 3G and 4G networks, with which no problems arise within Moscow. Wireless protocols: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0
It will be difficult to get lost with this smart phone even in the absence of communication; in addition to GPS and GLONASS, it is equipped with an electronic compass. The only disadvantage of using geolocation systems is a rather long cold start, about a minute, but after one time this problem disappears.
Bluboo S1 design
In terms of design, we won’t see anything new; now many Chinese manufacturers are copying the design of Xiaomi’s Mi Mix[/anchor], which set the trend for frameless design. The appearance of the smartphone is admirable; in its price category it looks really bright, but we all understand that the main concept was copied from a more eminent compatriot. The absence of frames around the perimeter of the Bluboo S1 display has a positive effect on the perception of its design and will allow the smartphone to feel confident in its niche.
The engineers took a thorough approach to the development of this model; this is their best device to date. This is evident in everything, starting with the materials used. We chose glass as the base, which covers the front and front panels. It is scratch-resistant, almost does not collect fingerprints and is designed using 2.5D technology, so the edges are rounded. But it would be better to immediately put on a silicone bumper - the glass is slippery, which means the device can easily be dropped from your hands.
A review of the Bluboo S1 smartphone showed that the frame was deliberately made of high-strength aluminum, which makes the structure rigid. Regarding the build quality, everything is perfect; during the review, we did not find anything to complain about. The device feels expensive and premium.
Functional elements are located in familiar places.
A speaker was installed above the screen, but other than that, nothing else fit here.
Below it is the Home key, a selfie camera eye, a proximity and light sensor. The solution is atypical and you cover the front camera with your fingers with a standard hand grip, so it will be convenient to turn the body over to take a selfie. The “Home” button, in addition to its main purpose, plays the role of a fingerprint scanner, which takes only 0.1 seconds to operate.
On the right there is a power control key and a volume rocker.
On the left is a tray for a pair of SIM cards. If you want to increase the amount of internal memory with a microSD card, then one of them will have to be sacrificed.
USB Type-C was placed on the bottom edge, and on the sides of it the meshes of the multimedia speaker and microphone are visible. They decided to abandon the standard 3.5 mm jack, so get ready to carry an adapter with you.
There is a dual main camera module installed at the back, occupying space in the upper left corner. It is equipped with an LED flash. Closer to the center there is a corporate logo. The use of glass had a positive effect on the final weight of the structure - 149 grams. The case fits comfortably in the hand, which is a merit of its thoughtful shape and small thickness - 7.9 mm.
Bottom line
Bluboo S1 is a good budget smartphone that doesn't boast a lot of features or top-end specifications, but offers decent configurations and a stylish design for a minimal price.
Is it worth buying?
If you're looking for a budget phone, this might be the one for you. This is a good smartphone for $160. Overall this is a good, inexpensive phone that is better suited for travel.
Buy Bluboo S1
Look
Advantages of Bluboo S1
- Good camera
- Big screen
- Detailed Image
- Fast and accurate fingerprint scanner
- Stylish design
- Decent performance
- Availability of USB Type-C connector
Disadvantages of S1
- Lack of NFC for mobile payments
- Mediocre sound
- The camera blurs the foreground
Display
The Bluboo S1 review moves on to a 5.5-inch diagonal screen with FullHD resolution. The manufacturer of the matrix is the company Sharp, well known in the budget segment. Gorilla Glass 4 with an oleophobic coating applied to it ensures the safety of the display throughout the entire time of use. This is not to say that it is of ideal quality, but prints can be easily removed. Colors are moderately bright and contrasty, and the pixel density reaches 401 per inch.
When you change the viewing angle, the colors lose their saturation, but the information remains readable. Using the pre-installed software, you can customize the display for yourself by choosing the optimal color rendering mode. The minimum brightness level, in our opinion, could have been lower; in the dark the picture blinds the eyes at first.
Screen
The screen is a part of the smartphone that manufacturers are actively experimenting with in 2020. And the trend is framelessness and non-standard aspect ratio. Bluboo in S1 left the usual ratio, but made every effort to get rid of the frames at the edges. The company succeeded only partially. The frames are still present, they are clearly visible, and below there is a completely familiar chin.
The display of Bluboo S1 is made using IPS technology, and not AMOLED, as is the case with Doogee Mix. Naturally, OGS technology is used, that is, there is no air gap between the touchscreen and the matrix. The display is large – 5.5 inches. However, with minimal frames, the smartphone does not look or feel like a phablet or, as they say in common parlance, a “shovel”. With such characteristics, the smartphone fits well in the hand, which has already been confirmed by other similar models. The resolution is FullHD, which provides a density of 401 dots per inch. The image is good, the software allows you to adjust the color temperature and other features. The Bluboo S1 has good viewing angles and is bright enough for use on a sunny day. Overall, the screen was a success. And the narrow frames only fuel interest.
Bluboo S1 performance
The technical characteristics of the Bluboo S1 are very impressive for its category. The processor chosen was Helio P25 from MediaTek, which we often see in the budget segment, and in particular on smartphones with dual cameras. It is designed using 16nm process technology, which ensures low power consumption and heat generation. Its structure contains 8 Cortex-A53 cores with a frequency limit of up to 2.5 GHz. The Mali-T880 graphics accelerator completes the overall picture. Performance is low, but all games will run on minimum graphics.
Test in Antutu:
Of course, the performance is much inferior to Snapdragon solutions, but they also cost significantly more. In everyday use, you will not feel any problems with a lack of power, with the exception of perhaps the most demanding games. They will only work on low graphics. A review of the Bluboo S1 smartphone in Russian showed that they did not skimp on RAM - 4 or 6 GB, depending on the selected modification. Everyone will decide for themselves what volume will be optimal for them, but in our opinion it is not worth overpaying. Today, 4 GB is quite enough. Problems with multitasking will not bother you in any case.
The smartphone can contain 64 or 128 GB, so you are unlikely to need a flash drive. But microSD, if desired, can be installed with a capacity of up to 256 GB.
i-SHOPPERS.net - product reviews and reviews of online stores
Bluboo S1 is another smartphone with a bezel-less design. In fact, the entire framelessness of such devices comes down to reducing only the top frame, while the rest of the frames remain standard. However, this solution still allows such smartphones to gain an unusual look, which some users like. I have already told you about such models as Doogee MIX and Maze Alpha. And now it's Bluboo S1's turn. All these smartphones are of the same breed and look very similar to each other.
Model S1 turned out to be far from ideal, especially the first batch. And my device is from the first wave. Moreover, this is an engineering sample from the manufacturer. Honestly, I don’t understand why manufacturers send crude engineering samples with a lot of mistakes for review. But judging by the reviews of the first customers, even serial smartphones have many shortcomings. The Chinese, as often happens, were in a hurry and released a crude product for sale. Before making this review, I studied the Bluboo S1 discussion thread on the 4PDA forum. And a representative of the Bluboo company under the nickname Bluboo Mobile actively participates in this discussion and he gave specific answers to many questions of concern to users and potential buyers. So in this review I will often quote this friend, which will allow you to learn as much as possible about the Bluboo S1 model and draw appropriate conclusions.
EQUIPMENT
The package includes:
- charger unit for 5V and 2A - USB-C cable - key to open the tray - protective glass for the screen - silicone bumper - multilingual instructions - adapter from USB-C to 3.5 mm jack, the presence of which tells us that the smartphone does not have an audio jack.
DESIGN
I don’t see the point in talking in detail about this design for the third time. In size and appearance, it is almost a complete analogue of Doogee MIX. One of the features I would like to note is that the ends here are made of plastic. The frame inside is metal. The front and back are 2.5D glass and each of them has a light oleophobic layer.
There are no complaints about the assembly - everything is fine. The tray holds two nanoSIM cards, one of which can be replaced with a memory card.
The dual camera and dual flash do not protrude beyond the body. The rear glass, of course, is easily soiled, so you will have to either hide the device in a case or bumper, or constantly wipe the glass, or just walk around with a tattered smartphone.
Like its competitors, Bluboo S1 has on-screen buttons with the ability to turn them off. But, as in Doogee MIX, here, if you disable the on-screen buttons, you will not be able to call up the menu of running applications - the “Home” touch button only allows you to perform the “Back” action and go to the desktop. As usual, the fingerprint scanner is hidden in the same “Home” button and its performance leaves much to be desired - the scanner is not only slow, but also inaccurate: fingerprints are often not recognized.
DISPLAY
At first glance, everything is fine on the screen - it’s a 5.5-inch FullHD IPS display without an air gap, with an average brightness reserve, large viewing angles and pleasant color rendition.
Multi-touch for 10 touches and there seems to be no fault here either - the touch handles touches normally. But! Periodically, the multitouch simply turns off. At first I thought that this was happening after launching Antutu - turning on this benchmark actually immediately disables multitouch. But later I realized that not only Antutu influences this. It was not possible to identify any pattern. In general, after spontaneously turning off multi-touch, the screen recognizes only one touch, after which it becomes impossible to scale photos, pages in the browser, etc. This is clearly a software bug and can be cured by simply rebooting the smartphone. And the point here is not that I have an engineering sample - on the w3bsit3-dns.com forum people have repeatedly posted about this problem. There have been no comments from the manufacturer on this matter yet. Although no, there was a recommendation to disable the three-finger screenshot in the settings. I turned it off, but it didn’t help: multitouch continued to turn off, so programmers should fix this in updates.
HARDWARE
The memory of such Chinese is always in perfect order: we have 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of built-in. And there is also an older version of 6/128 GB. The processor is exactly the same story as in Doogee MIX, as in Maze Alpha. Helio P25 is declared with a frequency of 2.5 GHz, but many benchmarks show a frequency of 2.4 GHz and the Helio P20 processor type. Because of this, buyers of such smartphones even demanded compensation from stores. My opinion is this: I don’t believe that the manufacturers resorted to massive and easily detectable deception by slipping in a different processor. Yes, you can expect everything from the Chinese, but not to the same extent. A Bluboo representative has posted on the forum several times on this topic and here are some of his quotes:
“It’s just that Mediatek sells them, under the guise of P25. So yes, Bluboo S1 and Doogee Mix use P25 Lite, but MTK played a cruel joke on everyone, since nothing is officially known about P25 Lite, even on the official website. And simply put, everyone sells it as a P25.”
“I declare with 99.9% accuracy that we use MediaTek P25, but its Lite version, which has not yet been officially presented by MTK themselves, but they are selling it in full.”
That is, according to Bluboo Mobile, Mediatek released a frequency-reduced, so-called Lite version of Helio P25, which was purchased and used by manufacturers in smartphones. This explanation, in my opinion, looks the most plausible. That is, Mediatek (and these are also Chinese) cheated a little, lowered the frequencies and sold the percent under the guise of a full-fledged P25. And now manufacturers and stores are forced to take the rap. In fact, a difference of 100 MHz is unlikely to affect performance and I would not worry about it at all.
SOFTWARE PART
Bluboo S1 runs on Android 7.0, on top of which a third-party launcher is preinstalled and several non-standard options are added. It is possible to quickly change themes. There were some potentially dangerous files - the antivirus found one malicious system file associated specifically with the native launcher. You can only remove it using root rights.
The software was developed by the same programmers who worked on the Doogee MIX firmware. Here's what a Bluboo representative said about this:
“We simply hired the same team of developers, who, in turn, use their own developments from Doogee Mix in our S1. Simply put, the source material for the firmware is the same.”
By the way, Doogee MIX was also not ideal in terms of software, so the level of these developers leaves much to be desired. Well, we can only hope that the software will be improved with updates. To date, I have received only one update, but it did not bring any visible changes. At the moment, the Bluboo company is actively promoting its new smart S8 and I will tell you about it later. And in this regard, another quote from Bluboo Mobile:
“S8 already has a different development team that collaborates with Qihoo and makes 360 OS. Look at the topics with our other products, there the smartphone became better with each software update. And we’ve been releasing updates for a relatively long time—one-year-old Maya and Picasso had an update not long ago.”
OTHER FUNCTIONALITY
The hardest thing is that the first batches of Bluboo S1 did not receive light and proximity sensors. If we had a smartphone in front of us for $50-60, this could be explained. But Bluboo S1 now costs about $170 in China! At this price this is not normal. The proximity sensor function here was primitively hung on the screen - if you touch the display glass, the screen still goes dark during a conversation. But this is not a full-fledged replacement and the screen does not always go dark during conversations. We found something to save on!
Comment from
If it's true, good. But people who bought on pre-order, paid not so little money for a smart device and got into the first batch will probably remain dissatisfied.
Well, a little honey in this ointment. The set of other sensors is solid - there is a magnetic sensor and a gyroscope. GPS/GLONASS navigation works. As a dialer, the smart seems to work well. Wireless modules in service. It was not possible to check the OTG function because my adapter turned out to be too short - in the Bluboo S1, the USB-C port is too recessed into the case.
I won’t criticize the sound of the main speaker - the speaker is of medium volume, it doesn’t sound unpleasant, it’s good for ringtones. I liked the sound through the headphones.
CAMERAS
Initially, there were rumors that the camera would receive a Sony IMX258 sensor. But the software detects the old 13-megapixel Sony IMX 135 sensor. What does the Bluboo representative say? Here is his next quote:
“Module in the IMX214 smartphone. Now we are trying to find the reason why the program says that imx135 is installed.”
In short, you won't understand what kind of sensor it is. Be that as it may, any of the above sensors could give the smartphone normal photo capabilities. But my engineering Bluboo S1 doesn’t just shoot poorly, it shoots disgustingly. My autofocus constantly wanders both in photo and video mode. All distant objects turn out blurry and not clear. I also had something similar in Maze Alpha, but there the situation was corrected with the very first software update. Here the update did not solve the problem. However, in other reviews I saw positive reviews about the camera, and examples of photos from users, in principle, with good clarity. So yes, this is a problem with my unfinished sample. But let me remind you that the manufacturer sent me this smartphone for review so that I could show it to my viewers. Well, I’m showing you what they sent. I don’t understand what’s the point of sending raw, unfinished devices for review?
The additional camera, like that of competitors, is purely for show - this is a marketing fake.
The front camera is stated to be 5 MP with interpolation up to 8 MP. The 2 MP IMX190 sensor is software defined.
AUTONOMY
The battery according to official data is 3500 mAh. A simple Chinese tester showed less - more than 2800 mAh. The original charger is 5V and, as you understand, it does not support fast charging. But the smartphone itself, again, according to a Bluboo representative, has support for Pump Express 2.0.
Autonomy is not the best. With moderately active use, the battery may not last the whole day. Traditionally, I checked the discharge while watching videos online - the battery lost 20% of its charge in 1 hour.
VERDICT
I have to admit - this is an unsuccessful smartphone. A school on a school and a school driving. Yes, I don't have the production version. But the first buyers also complained about some of the disadvantages that I mentioned. It feels like the entire first batch is engineering samples
