BLU Launches The BLU S1 With Android Nougat, Costs $179.99 ~ All Things Android

BLU has announced a new smartphone offering, the BLU S1, and it costs less than $200. This handset can be used on three major US carriers, including T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T. However, the device is not compatible with Verizon, even though the BLU S1 can connect to CDMA networks. The front part of the smartphone contains a 5.2-inch display with a resolution of 1280 by 720 and pixel density of 282ppi. Below the screen is a fingerprint scanner while the right-hand side of the device contains both the volume rocker and the power button. The handset lacks capacitive navigation buttons and instead uses on-screen buttons to navigate through the user interface. A 3.5mm headphone jack is placed at the top part of the handset and a microUSB port for charging and data transfer is located at the opposite end.

The BLU S1 is powered by the MT6750 chipset from MediaTek, which is comprised of eight ARM Cortex A53 64-bit CPUs and the Mali T-860 GPU. The CPUs are clustered into two groups of four cores, with one cluster clocked at 1.5GHz and the other cluster has a maximum frequency of 1.0GHz. The LTE modem incorporated into the SoC supports Category 6 downlink LTE, which means that the device can attain maximum download speeds of 300Mbps, and it utilizes 2x carrier aggregation in order to reach those speeds. Meanwhile, the maximum upload speeds that can be attained by the chipset is 50Mbps. Other wireless technologies supported by the device include Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi connectivity.

The handset has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal flash storage that can be expanded by a microSD card. The rear camera of the smartphone is equipped with a 13-megapixel sensor and it has an aperture size of f/2.0. The rear camera can record videos with a resolution of 1080p and a frame rate of 30fps. The selfie shooter, on the other hand, sports a 5-megapixel shooter and the images that it captures are enhanced by the included Beauty settings. The smartphone includes a 2,800mAh battery to keep its lights on and it will ship with Android 7.0 Nougat pre-installed. Users may buy the BLU S1 from Amazon and choose from any one of the three available color variants of the device, namely black, grey, and gold, although it is likely that Sprint may sell the smartphone soon. The unlocked model of the handset is priced at $179.99.

Buy the BLU S1