



I've been using a Pixel 2 since it's launch day last year, and it had been an exceptionally smooth and reliable experience, even while I was using the Android P beta. As great as it was, I was getting bored with the phone, and it was beginning to become worn, most notably by blown out speakers and a charger port that was becoming looser all the time. I was feeling impatient waiting for October, and I didn't want to attempt an RMA or try to sell the phone online, so I traded my phone in at Best Buy, using the credit to purchase a BLU Vivo XI+, which I ended up getting for a great price. Everyone I've discussed this decision with said I made a really wild and ridiculous choice which is probably mostly true, but I really wanted to try something radically different. While my experience has been surprisingly pleasant and better than expected, I'll still be upgrading to something the likes of One Plus 6T, Pixel 3, or maybe even Razer Phone 2 if it ends up having an SD845, or is available through T-Mobile. Not sure yet.





The included case was a delightful surprise.









The Vivo XI+ is a budget phone that is attempting to redefine Blu's disappointing brand image and push the boundaries of price for features and hardware. My model which is $300 (there's a higher end model as well) equip with a Full HD+ 6.2" LCD notched display married to a surprisingly premium all metal and glass design. One brief inspection of this phone is all it takes to fervently confirm that people and Android manufacturers really love Apple, as this phone has an almost offensive resemblance to the iPhone X. If not for the fingerprint scanner and BLU logo flanked on the rear, you could definitely fool most people. In hardware, this phone is powered by the MediaTek Helio P60 SoC, 64GB of storage with 4GB of RAM, a surprisingly decent Face ID dot map knock-off, dual-SIM with SD card expansion, and a mono bottom-mounted speaker that while isn't anywhere near amazing, it is surprisingly loud and serviceable. In cameras, this phone has dual cameras at the rear (16 and 5MP) and a 16mp selfie shooter. Maybe I was spoiled by my Pixel 2's cameras, but these sensors are pretty much trash. In good lighting, shots can be serviceable, but there's nothing special to report. For $300 I expected nothing more.





The noise is strong with these camera sensors.

So, after just over a week with this instead of Pixel 2, I'm shocked at the contrast to my expectations. This phone is huge, and I really like it. My Pixel 2 was a very tiny phone for 2018 which is something I've come to find myself preferring after using tons of phones, based especially heavily on my dislike of handling experiences with phones like LG G3 and Note 5. Perhaps the 19:9 extra tall screen to body ratio is a game changer in handling; perhaps it's simply that big phones in 2018 are a lot better than 2014-2015 ones.





I've been a major protester of the Notch movement. Working with phones for a living, my opinion and outlook has always been negative, panning the likes of LG, One Plus, Asus and Huawei for needlessly incorporating them, but for some reason, I bought an iPhone X imitation that has one anyway. Reviews always point to the notch becoming less noticeable fairly quickly. I can now also reluctantly report this is true for me as well. While I still don't think it's a good design and BLU's software has allowed me to mask it (poorly may I add, hiding it with a non-LED is kind of silly) I've thrown out my picket signs and I'm done protesting. It's really not as bad as I thought, I still wouldn't prefer it though.





The most challenging experience on this phone has been performance and bloat. My first week with the phone had me somewhat disappointed by lag while trying to use Spotify, Google Maps and Facebook Messenger simultaneously to find major frame drops, accompanied by app crashes and issues, namely involving apps which allow for a fingerprint for login, like financial apps. It's also been frustrating giving up NFC for Google Pay, though with BLU and their reputation for not great security, it's probably for the best and it's been easy to adjust to this temporary inconvenience. Today, however, I was on a failed quest to find root to clean up bloatware, which devolved to using Substratum for interface tweaks and using ADB to manually remove junk. Somewhere along the way I messed up breaking the UI to the point of a blank display with a unusable notification bar, which required me to factory reset despite my best efforts to fix the issue through ADB. To my great surprise following this, I've found the phone is suddenly working much better. I've been heavily using it for hours since, and with almost the exact same setup and apps, everything seems suddenly much smoother, and the battery is holding much better too. This shouldn't be so on a week old phone, but I'll take it and hope this continues. Based on tonight, it works completely within my standards of serviceable that most of the week had not and I'm hoping this continues.





This is practically non-stop screen use, and I've written this entire article on the phone to further my point for the sudden increase in battery stamina.





In conclusion, budget phones are getting so much better. Despite the US Dollar losing value all the time, the buying power for cheap phones keeps increasing steadily every year. While there's certainly merit in premium phones for bleeding edge performance and photography, a two to three hundred dollar investment gets you so, so much more now than even what you could get a few years ago. I remember reluctantly spending around $175 on an LG Optimus phone in 2013 after my Nexus 4 had busted, just to be using a phone that was supremely disappointing and thanks to a 4GB storage ROM would have been flat out unusable if not for my use of Cloud services and music streaming.





If you're looking for a usable budget phone right now, this phone has my approval if you're looking for something really large and don't care about using Google Pay, or getting updates timely or for the long run. Since that new Pocophone F1 isn't really accessible in Western markets right now and would be an easy pick for best budget phone, I still think I'd be more likely to recommend either the Moto X4 or G6 for a similar price and cleaner software, but I'd imagine most average smartphone users could comfortably use any of the three which I'd recommend over similarly priced Samsungs like the Galaxy J3/J7 almost definitely. Seriously, the 2018 version of the J7 still only has 16GB of storage which I think is a serious shortcoming for this year, even on cheap phones.





While I'm still eager for next month's new phones and I'm definitely going to upgrade to a more premium experience, the Vivo XI+ is definitely a phone than changed my mind. Well played, BLU.

So, my last article was ranting and complaining about phone design, specifically that of the notched variety, which I wrote back in May. Just about exactly four months later, screen notch is seemingly not something that's about to go away unless you're an OEM like Vivo or Oppo whose fighting back by forcing intense innovation by motorizing your cameras to hide inside of your phone's body a la Transformers, or Power Rangers.