Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Very thin form factor | build quality | might levitate | gorilla glass 3 front and back | aluminum sides | octacore | runs very stable | very good super amoled screen | phone size just right | decent sound | good 8MP back camera which does not protrude | flash | very good front camera | decent battery life | smooth web and text scrolling | great cell and wifi reception | great gps | has fm radio | has bluetooth 4.0 | proximity, accelerometer, gyro, compass, light sensor | blu almost gives it away for free, who needs an $800 iphone | just replace the stock launcher with a third party launcher | I have attached some photos taken with this phone (they have on-the-phone image post processing with free software but still demonstrate what is possible to achieve) | my phone kept in a thin case or without survived numerous drops on a hardwood floor unscathed Amazing price for what you get. This is a beautiful sleek feather-like device, the build quality is just fantastic. I got it in black, but I imagine white color would be even more attention grabbing. I am coming from Galaxy S3 (T999 with 2 Gb of RAM) and Vivo Air still feels like a relatively significant upgrade. The quality of the screen is on par with Galaxy S3 (and S4 as I am comparing to my coworker's phones), Air's screen feels brighter and has a cooler tone, my S3 screen turned too warm after nearly two years. Air's 1280x720 screen resolution and 306 ppi pixel density are very sufficient for its size and for prolonging the battery life. Air's screen is SuperAMOLED technology, which gives the blackest blacks and bright, saturated colors, however, all AMOLED screens are barely visible in direct sunlight. If visibility under direct sunlight is important, go with IPS screens. Air's form factor and the light weight are much better than S3. Air is a more attractive device. Air has WAY better cell reception including WiFi. My S3 after some update developed an issue of telling me that "your connection is unstable" every 5 minutes and barely ever had half a bar indoors. S3 would also faint unless situated within a foot of a WiFi router. Air's modem seems solid and has a wider range. The quality of Air's sound seems comparable to S3 T999 (also through the headphones). Air's camera is corresponding to S3 in bright light, but appears to have more noise in low light. Air's flash is strong and tends to wash out the images taken within a close distance. In the native Air's camera app, it is possible to tap on the screen to tell the phone precisely where to focus and to separate areas of focus and metering by holding on the square and moving the yellow circle out of it elsewhere. Very cool feature and it will help to get exposure right and to avoid blown sky. Air is not my DSLR or Fiio music player with Wolson DAC, but it is reasonable for a phone. I use Rocket player app on Air and I enabled the 10 band equalizer to open up the sound more. Air's sound volume when you hold the phone to your ear on a call is sufficient even in the car but appears to be not very loud. I see no way to bump the ear speaker volume in accessibility settings. On the call volume is very loud through the headphones. I had an issue with some extraneous noise while listening to the stored music on Air through the earphones when the phone was simultaneously plugged in to charge with some chargers. It appears that the super slim body does not have the greatest shielding. Air's ambient light sensor appears to be on the back of the device, which seemingly renders auto brightness screen adjustment rather flickery. I found I prefer screen brightness set manually. I have been on android for years, nevertheless, at first I could not figure out how to answer a call on Air. When the phone rings, to answer the call pull down from the center, to reject pull up. There are no visible red and green buttons, just the lines on the top and bottom of the screen. Since one has to slide the card of the caller up or down, instead of pushing the on-screen buttons, this prevents accidental and non-intended answer or rejection. I have not had a single dropped call with Air so far. Bluetooth pairs and works. Google Play market comes on the phone as a native app. Blu has already released two little updates for the device which I installed with no issues. I have also not experienced any WiFi issues with this device with any firmware version. I heard Air is to receive Lollipop in July. Air has been running fast and steady for me, it seems a bit snappier than S3 in spite of having less RAM. The octacore processor compensates for 1 Gb of RAM and less quantity of RAM on Air with a power efficient processor probably means better battery life. Air has quite very smooth scrolling in Chrome compared to my former jumpy S3. I have not experienced any stuttering with Air, unlike with S3. Typing on Air is very precise, the built in keyboard (a spin of Google Keyboard) is very good. However, Air is not a phone for those who need to install a lot of apps and games due to the internal storage and RAM limitations (although it can handle a number of apps). 16Gb of built in memory is divided into two partitions, approximately in half, and you get less than 8 Gb for system storage where you install apps. Approximately 11 Gb of internal storage space altogether is available to the user. Some apps could be moved to phone storage which acts like an internal SD card. The phone itself has no external SD card slot. This is OK with me as my S3 often could not read the memory card anyway. Air has FM radio (you connect headphones for the antenna) which helps with the limited space for storing a large collection of music. Air comes with little to no bloat (wow, S3 was literally handicapped by its bloat). The built in launcher is rather strange and very limited, as it pops all the icons on the desktop in random order and there is no way to fast arrange the icons by name (you can arrange manually and create folders and stick these icons in a few folders though). I just installed a new launcher right away, Google Now launcher is very small in footprint and my issue of random icons dumped on the desktop is solved, I have the app drawer back. Bonus: Google Now allows you to launch the apps from the search bar as well as to order commands and searches via voice, saying "open calculator" or "call John" is very quick. Works accurately too. If you install Google Now, you have to get to the settings via pulling down the taskbar and tapping on "more" and "settings" again for the system settings or search for "settings" in Google bar. I also installed free Go Locker, because the native lock screen was acting goofy. I get no double lock with Go on 4.4.2 after the first time I reboot my phone (an achievement in this version of android, I heard). Between the slick phone, the beautiful unlock screen, and some installed free live wallpapers by Ruslan Sokolovsky (check these out on Google Play, they are gorgeous and have no ads) my phone is stunning. I drove around with Air's GPS and Google Maps, and Air seemed fast and accurate, following my route and car location without delay. It found GPS signal quickly after I turned on GPS. The battery life seems better than S3 (which had a new battery installed). The battery charge meter appears to be not very accurate, as it drops fast at first and then tends to linger on around 70-80% for a longer while. I am using medium screen brightness and some power saving settings, and leave GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi mostly off unless I need to use them. I have not noticed the phone getting hot at all (my S3 could fry me an egg if I wished), but I am not much of a gamer and that could be due the power saving features enabled on my phone. Air has very useful smart gesture feature where you can enable quick access to any four apps of your choice via drawing C and U shapes on the screen when the screen is off. You can also enable waking the device with double tapping on the screen, it is convenient and can prevent wear of the power button. Air's accessibility settings has an option to enable phone use with gloves. :) Air arrives with a little tool to pop out the Sim card tray, don't make the mistake I did of trying to use a thick paperclip and risk scratching the little hole. Air comes with a very slim and light case, which does not add bulk and looks as attractive as any case could ever hope, and covers the headphone and USB ports unless in use. Also included in the very nice box are in-ear phones with mic, a wall charger/usb cable and a screen protector. Air does not have T-Mobile's 1700 AWS band but I live in an area where T-Mobile has refarmed to 1900 and I get solid 3G on 1900/2100, I use T-Mobile owned prepaid GoSmart. Air's speeds are slower on 3G than they were on S3 1700 band (this is due to T-Mobile's end of things, GoSmart caps the speed more on 1900, while they were not capped in my area on 1700 AWS), however, Air's WiFi is much faster than S3. The difference in download speeds on WiFi is rather huge. Air is capable of 4G but has no LTE which is paradoxically a very good thing in my opinion, since LTE would likely cause some phone overheating, and eat and wear the non-user-replaceable battery too fast. Air is known to be a re-branded Gionee Elife S5.1, however, Gionee S5.1 does not have the crucial HSDPA 1900 band or other appropriate bands to be able to get anything more than 2g anywhere in the United States on any GSM provider. Overall, I can't believe that I parted with $620 for a flimsy S3 a bit less than two years ago, which turned unstable and progressively more unlivable, and did not hold up to the price paid with many bugs and annoyances throughout the months of use. I think I will avoid buying another signal disoriented Samsung device or anything similarly overpriced. I will keep on looking into Blu phones in the future. So far Air has been a responsive, reliable and a very enjoyable device to use. The price is so reasonable for a device with a sealed battery. Features I miss: LED notification light. Air does not have it (neither does iphone 6). Removable battery, but I am fine with this, since it translates into a fantastic sleek body, and I did not expend $600+ Note to Blu: please fix your silly icon dumping unsortable by name built in launcher (at least give it an option to fast arrange icons by name) and your acting up locker in some kind of a system update, for they stand a good chance of being decent as well.