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Hey guys this is Austin. Is a giant smartphone worth it? With a seven inch display the Blu
Studio 7.0 might look like a tablet but this is a full fledged smartphone. Crack open the
box and inside you’ll find the Studio itself along with a screen protector, get a little
deeper in the unboxing and you’ll see the power adapter, tool for getting at the SIM
and MicroSD, MicroUSB cable and a pair of headphones. Take a quick look around and you’ll
see the Studio resembles the Nexus 7 which isn’t a bad thing at all. Even though it’s
all plastic there’s a decent looking metal like finish on the front and around back it’s
covered in a soft touch dimpled rubber which gives it a nice feel in the hand. It’s much
more manageable than a bigger tablet like an iPad although compared to a normal sized
smartphone...not so much. As if a seven inch smartphone wasn’t crazy enough the Studio
only runs $100. Because of that you aren’t going to find cutting edge specs but there’s
not a ton to complain about. With a seven inch 1024 by 600 screen it doesn’t sound
like much on paper but the panel itself really isn’t bad, it has solid color and viewing
angles unlike most budget devices. That resolution is low though even for smaller phone standards
but it is usable. What’s slightly less usable is the size. While this is small for a tablet
it is enormous for a phone. The Studio will fit in my pocket but it doesn’t leave much
room left, you really should keep this in a bag. The front firing speaker does double
as a speakerphone for taking calls on, you look totally ridiculous with this thing against
your face but it is there. That also means you’ve got HSPA for data, it might not be
LTE but again for $100 it’s rare to find cellular data on a tablet period. To get at
the SIM slot you’ll need to use the tool included with the Studio to unscrew a small
panel around back. Here you’ll find the slots for the SIM and MicroSD but something
important to keep in mind is that it uses an old school Mini SIM which are pretty rare
these days, you’ll probably need an adapter. You’ll also probably want to take advantage
of that MicroSD card slot too as the included eight gigs of storage won’t get you that
far. Inside it’s got a Mediatek quad core Cortex A7 CPU along with one gigabyte of RAM,
definitely nothing too impressive but it’s decent enough in real use. There’s a bit
of hesitation in basic tasks like scrolling through the UI compared to the latest flagships
but it’s not a deal breaker, just don’t expect for it to crush all of the latest games.
Software wise we’re looking at Android 5.0, while this is getting to be pretty out of
date these days on the upside it’s a clean install of Android with just a few bundled
apps. Most of these are fairly useful like the Amazon suite or easy enough to ignore
and of course you’ve got the Play Store to download whatever you’d like. One area
where you can definitely notice the price is with the cameras. They’re…definitely
not amazing. The front facing shooter is passable for a quick video chat and while the rear
facing five megapixel camera is better it really isn’t by much. While budget phones
have come a long way in the last few years the camera department has definitely been
lagging behind. There are two ways of looking at the Blu Studio 7, on one hand you’ve
got one of the biggest and weirdest smartphones I’ve ever come across. On the other you’re
getting a $100 tablet that’s not only competitive as a cheap tablet but it includes not only
data but voice and text as well. Look at it from that perspective and the Studio really
isn’t half bad. So what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments below and I will
catch you in the next one!