Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

OK so after having this phone for 11 days now I figured I should get around to making an honest review. To give some context I currently have a Samsung Galaxy S4, my wife has a Nexus 5, my older daughter has an IPhone, and my younger daughter has a Blu Studio 5.0 II (love that phone) I had been researching this phone since it was announced. So I was very excited to get it 2 days after ordering it via Amazon prime for only $218 shipped. When I got the phone I was a little scared because I could not get it to turn on right away as almost all other phones had been able to do out of the box. So I threw it on the charger for an hour and viola it boots right up... Just a dead battery, no big deal. (This may be what was wrong for others who gave this phone a bad review) So onto the phone, WOW, what a display! It is amazing... Very bright and the colors seem spot on to me. It is definitely brighter than the super AMOLED screen on the Samsung Galaxy S4. At the time KitKat was not yet available so after booting up I had to install the update to get the Google services to work. No big deal again... Took less than 10 minutes. Now that the KitKat OS update is available (yay!) This may be a moot point. Speaking of KitKat it became available a few days later. That install went very smooth... A small side note a SD card is required to install KitKat. I would assume everyone who buys this phone will increase the factory 4 gig storage with a new SD card anyway. Kitkat seems very, very good on this phone without any bugs *see update at end of review* that I have seen unlike when I upgraded to KitKat on my Galaxy S4... I had a problem with my phone not wanting to wake up, hense my looking for a new phone. I love the near-stock Android experience that Blu puts on their phone. It's not all stuffed with bloat like Samsung's Touch Wiz. It's been a year and a half and I am still paying over $100 a month for my subsidised Galaxy S4 with 4 gigs of data a month through At&t. I can't wait until my contract is up with them... I will never do a subsidised contract phone again. This $218 phone with a prepaid service like Straight Talk at $45 a month is unbeatable. I was able to take the At&t micro Sim card from the S4 and with the help of an adapter kit from Amazon put it in the Blu 6.0 HD (KAISI 4 in 1 Sim Card Converter Adapter Kit $4.15) The phone set itself up to work automatically on At&t. I did not have to set or change any of the APN settings. Calls are about average, no complaints. The touch screen is not a sensitive as my S4 but only very slightly less. 11 days later I really don't notice any sensitivity issues. The phone is very responsive with very little lag. YouTube and Netflix videos play well on both WiFi and the HDSPA 21 mb data network. I notice a few more seconds of buffering for videos over my S4 on the 4g LTE network but nothing worth worrying about. I did notice sometimes the audio would get a touch out of sync with video on the YouTube app but a quick backup of a few seconds on the scroll bar fixed that when it was a problem. (Update 7/26/14 This appears fixed with the latest OTA update) Otherwise video is superb on this phone as are pictures. I don't see much of a need for these super hi definition phones. The 720 x 1280 245 PPI on the Blu 6.0 is just fine for my eyes. The speaker is about average for a general smart phone... Just fine for videos and music. The headphone jack works well with all the headphones and ear buds I have tried with it. The camera is surprisingly good of course not a good as the Samsung S4 or IPhone but does great for what I need. The front camera isn't too bad either. I will try to get some comparison photos taken with the Blue 6.0, the Galaxy S4 and the Nexus 5. Look for those on the Amazon owner-submitted pictures. The 3000 mAH battery is pretty darn good. Getting me through most of my day. I may have to throw it on the charger towards end of the night as I use it constantly throughout the day. (my 10.1" tablet gets used a lot less now that I have this phablet) The USB charging socket at the top of the device take a little getting used-to but I am fine with it now. As far as GPS goes it does work.... BUT I did notice that the GPS sometimes had me appear as if I was not properly centered on the road at all time... not sure what that was about but it was putting me off by maybe 50 to a hundred feet or so but would correct itself... I was able to successfully navigate all three of times I used the GPS.... Once with no problems and the other 2 times it showed my truck driving "next" to the road sometimes. Hopefully Blu will fix this issue with an update. (Update 7/26/14 this appears to be fixed with the latest OTA update... Much better now) As far a size goes it is big but I am still able to fit it in my front pocket no problem. I was able to fix my Galaxy S4 from not being able to boot up with a reset but I still find myself using the Blu 6.0 HD over the S4 because of the big beautiful screen. Sorry Samsung the S4 seems to be collecting a lot of dust lately. The con's I see for this phone are lack of cases and availability of hardened "gorilla" type glass protectors. (The supplied case works great btw.) Also I miss the TV remote capability of the S4 and the wireless Qi charging of the Nexus 5 but for only $218 shipped via Amazon Prime this unlocked phone can't be beat. I give it 5 stars. Samsung and Apple can keep all their gimmicky smart scrolls and finger print scanners... This phone does 99% of what I need it to do and at cost less than 1/3 of the other flagships. Buy one... You won't be disappointed! *Update July 27 2014* Blu released an update to the KitKat release that fixed a few issues that popped up. Some I found are as follows: Stock Android messaging app Hangouts would fail and crash when sending a text. This is now fixed. I had heard it also could not send pics via text on WiFi... This is now fixed too. I heart radio would crash upon opening. This is now fixed. The stock YouTube app would freeze and audio would get out of sync on both data and WiFi. This seems better now. I do most of my You Tube watching through the chrome browser. Perfect. The GPS had issues showing accurate location. This Noe seems better. GPS works pretty well now. Any other findings I will post here. If anyone knows of a Blu Studio 6.0 HD forum maybe you can post it here in the comments section.