[grandalf]

I'm not sure why everyone is caught up with the competition between Apple and Samsung when the Blu R1-HD sells for $59. Most people I know would be indifferent between the Blu R1-HD and a higher end phone (considering performance, battery life, form factor, build quality, camera and screen quality).

[PostOnce]

Theres a bigger difference than you think.

I have here a Sony Xperia E1 and a Motorola Moto G (2nd gen)

The Xperia is also $59 and Sony is a more widely known brand so let's assume they're similar.

The Moto G was $179 new some years ago the Xperia is $59 today.

On paper, they're similar in terms of ram, cpu cores, flash, gpu, etc.

But in practice... there is an absolute world of difference, and we're not talking flagship phones vs cheap ones, we're talking one cheap phone vs a slightly less cheap phone, but still low-mid range.

The screen on the sony sucks by comparison, its all washed out and grey (not IPS), the speakers also suck, the camera sucks, the letters in the SONY logo are falling off it now says SO, the thing is a bastard to hold on to because the case is slippery. It's also just slower for some reason, even though the CPU is faster, so I assume the flash is crappy? And the digitizer sucks, scrolling goes wobbly all the time. (I thought, oh, I'll buy a cheap Sony, they make good stuff... I guess cheap shit is cheap shit no matter whose name is on it.)

and that's Sony, so I can only imagine Blu is worse.

(just FYI, flagships are better at everything in terms of speed, display quality, camera, feeling, etc, but they also do A LOT MORE physically, i.e. they have NFC, they're waterproof, they read fingerprints, they have multiple gyros, etc)

[makomk]

Why would you imagine that Blu is worse? Especially on the low end, a lot of the older brands can and do trade heavily on their established name and reputation to sell utter crap. There's little downside to this - as you demonstrated, if someone buys their stuff and it turns out to be a piece of shit they'll often just assume that everything else must be even worse.

From the specs I can find, the R1 HD has a 5-inch 720p IPS display and much better reviews than the Sony Xperia E1 did. Not only that, at the time of its release the E1 was competing with the Moto E which (like its bigger brother) also had an IPS screen and far better reviews than the E1.

[grandalf]

I agree with this. I bought a Blu R1-HD when my iPhone 6 screen cracked, and decided to wait a few weeks so I could just replace it with an iPhone 7.

The few weeks using the Blu went a lot differently than I expected. The phone is very solid and the overall experience of using the phone is first-rate.

It would be one thing if we were talking about a $599 Android phone compared with a $749 iPhone. But this thing cost me $59 which is in a totally different ballpark. I would simply not have expected it to be anywhere close to iPhone quality but it is.

The only things that are "worse" than an iPhone 6 in my opinion are:

- the touch screen is slightly less accurate for taps, but this could also be because I'm less accustomed to Android.

- No compass. GPS works fine but panning the phone around doesn't re-orient the map when navigating which is a feature I like.

There are also several nice features which it has that the iPhones lack, such as support for SD card storage expansion (I immediately added a fast 64GB one I had lying around) and a second SIM card.

Not trying to nitpick features. Buying a R1-HD is like getting a one year old Ferrari for $12K.

[PostOnce]

You two have convinced me to buy an R1-HD.