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.

I will start by saying that I am extremely particular about any tech that I purchase. Originally I was going to go with an iphone 5 s or 6 simply because Apple is a good well known product however, I did hear that the Blu phones were pretty solid smartphones. Well I had never actually used one or handled one. I decided to take a chance and went ahead and purchased the Blu Vivo Air. Let me tell you, the pictures do this phone absolutely no justice. This phone is so slim you almost feel like you would break it but it is solid it does not feel cheap in anyway. Whenever I have a smartphone I put it through the ropes, I will run apps back to back to back to back nonstop and I load my phone up with so many apps to where I literally have a hard time downloading emails because so many apps are on my phone. After a few days of having the Blu Vivo Air, I tell you what I've downloaded many many apps and not one has lag or crashed or given any type of problem on this phone, this phone is a rock solid piece of tech that I would absolutely highly recommend to anyone whether you are an Android user or Apple user, I would highly recommend the Blu Vivo Air smartphone.

UPDATE (2/20/15)

I wanted to emphasize about the WiFi problem that some are reporting on reviews. At first I had this problem as well. After testing I found that the WiFi process seemed to be freezing (which would require a reboot; at one point not even Airplane mode would turn WiFi off). After playing around in the settings I found that in the Advance WiFi settings the WLAN Optimization seemed to be the problem. After changing these settings I never had another issue with WiFi (except with one app; will mention in a moment). In Settings I went to WLAN and hit the three dots at the bottom right and chose "Advanced". From here I have Network Notifications (off, this is preference I find it annoying), Keep WLAN on during Sleep: Always, Scanning Always Available: TRUE, Avoid Poor Connections: FALSE, WLAN Optimization: FALSE. With these settings I have not had an issue of WiFi freezing or losing connectivity.

I mentioned one app having a WiFi problem. I am not sure what is happening exactly (I believe the app is trying to keep the connection alive and causing an issue when idling). This is the Denon HEOS app, which controls WiFi speakers. I am not sure if this is the app or the phone, but the speakers have had issues before so I cannot be certain it is the phone. However, I can use the app and control the speakers, I just have to be sure to kill the app once the music is playing and kill the "HEOS Available" constant Notification, and then there is no problem.

The WiFi process freezing seems to be a bug in the OS (another bug I found is the Soft key lights toggle is inverted). Maybe they will fix it, but if you disable the stuff mentioned above it will work perfect, and my battery life has also improved drastically after doing this (I believe the frozen process would be stuck using a high CPU percentage which drained the battery). In a normal day of usage I usually have around 60-60% (17 hours), while the Galaxy S4 only has around 10-30%).

UPDATE (2/18/15)

I created a video showing the phone playing games, music, video and other useful things. It turned out to be about 20 minutes (my video reviews are just as long as my written) so I cannot upload it on Amazon. I have put it on YouTube but cannot include a link. However, if you are interested in it and search for it on YouTube I am sure you can find it (my name is on it). You can see it playing GTA and Crazy Taxi and it is very responsive and fluid for the specs, so I wanted to show that in a video (since just saying it does not mean much). It shows features of the phone, browsing, photos, videos, game playing, audio

UPDATE (2/6/15)

After the performing the fix for the WiFi problem I mention (fix is below), I have had amazing battery life. On normal days of use (Pandora for about an hour riding to and from work on my bike; with 4G and Bluetooth) and the normal checking email, facebook, and web sites throughout the day (and of course the occasional OK Google {Random question that popped in my head}) I usually have about 50-60% battery left when I go to bed (usually between 11:30-12:00; and I wake up around 7:30). That is great battery life. Now of course when I am playing the Simpsons Tapped Out or Minecraft when bored the battery does not last as long, but I have yet to have it die on me since disabling the WiFi battery saver setting. I now have replaced my iPhone 5 with this phone and use it as my main phone, it brings back the feeling of when I first got my iPhone 3G when everyone looked like "what is that" when you had your phone out (back when not every single person and child had an iPhone)

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First off this phone is beautiful! When you open the box you will be amazed how gorgeous this phone is. The body is that of a super expensive device and the gold touch (not too goldish but a nice hue) makes the phone look elegant. No one will ever believe this is a $200 phone. For this review I am going to break it up into categories, I will also try to make a video review for it, as I was super impressed with it playing it GTA Vice City and wanted to show it in action.

Look/Design

The phone is great looking and just looks plain elegant. You will feel elite compared to your Plastic Samsung friends and it even looks better than the iPhone. This phone reminds me of a Sony device; very minimalistic. It feels good in your hands (it is about the same size as a Samsung Galaxy S4. It is also super thin. You should expect people to notice the thinnest of your phone.

The box also was very elegant and reminded me of Apple packaging, here is where it differs from Apple packaging: they gave you a case for the device (although in Apple's defense they gave me a case for my old iPhone 4 to help with the antenna) and they give you a screen protector!!!!! The normal items are also in the box (headphones, USB and power adapter). The headphones look really nice and have the flat cable (like Amazon's Fire headphones), which is nice. However, I cannot use the headphones (in ear headphones never stay in my ear; I use the Apple Earpods with the Buddi adapters [adapter that adds a over the ear clip]).

Cellular

This is one of the shortcomings of the phone. It only has support 4G, no LTE. This is not the end of the world in my opinion, and actually not including LTE probably saves some battery life. I will share that I have Net10 ($40 Unlimited) and on my iPhone 5 (with LTE) I usually average about 10-13 Mbps Download, while on this device (No LTE) I usually get around 3-5 Mbps. These speeds are more than capable for what I use my phone for. They stream Pandora or Netflix with no problems and I am not downloading any GB files, so LTE speeds are not that important to me.

My favorite bonus for this phone, was that they were nice enough to include APN profiles for Straight Talk, AT&T, NET10 Already programmed in the phone, so all I had to do was click on Net10 and I had MMS, SMS and Data. If yours was not included you just have to create a new profile for it using the info your carrier gives you.

Video

The screen is gorgeous! I personally never care about 1080 vs 720 on a phone, a screen that is only like 5 inches is not going to benefit that greatly from this many pixels. This 720 display is great looking and videos look amazing on it. I watched the Hobbit on it and was just beautiful! Colors were rich and the image was sharp and clear with no lag.

My only flaw with the display is that you can see the edge of the display (black) around the edge, most phones have this but with black phones it is not noticeable. You can see the black edge around the display between the white bezel. Not a big deal, but it would have been even more amazing to make that white for this unit or hide it under the casing (this is solely for design), and does not affect the screen, I just think it would have looked better.

Audio

Audio is surprisingly good. This device has as good as sound as my iPhone 5, which is surprising for a device with the speaker on the back. You could hear distinct channels and it sounded great! Headphones also work as expected and sound good, and I do not get that stupid "are you sure you want to turn the volume up" message when using headphones (like on the Galaxy S4).

An odd thing with the headphones. The headphones included worked great (but they do not stay in my ear; no in ear headphones do) the mic and everything work as expected. However, when I plug in Apple Earpods the audio works and sounds great but the microphone does not seem to work. It just records a loud screeching sound. So before you get on a GoToMeeting and cause a screeching sound for the entire meeting test out your own earphones with the Sound Recording app.

User Interface

I am an iOS person. I have had an iPhone since the iPhone 3G. I have tried Android devices but the GUI is not too my liking (especially the lock screen). This is still an Android device and my dislike for the lock screen is still present. I believe that Android Lollipop should address this (I want to see notifications on the lock screen for quick glances). However, I am trying to find an Android device I like since iPhone and prepaid service do not go together (iPhone's are ridiculously expensive and my iPhone 5 is starting to slow down).

Many people quickly said they loaded Google Now as the Launcher for this device. However, I do not recommend that. I use Google Now Launcher on my Galaxy S4 (I HATE Samsung's UI), and it is great. However, the Launcher that comes with this device can be made awesome! First I am not a fan of the icons, but that can be changed. Just go to the Theme setting (Menu on the home screen or the oddly named Color app) and Change to Android Theme. You now have the better looking native Android app icons. Then you can change the affect of the sliding between screens and finally the wallpaper. It comes with a lot of great wallpapers including Nexus wallpapers (Live) and some nice static wallpapers.

The Settings on this device is nicely laid out and I like the split up between the quick settings and the notification area. The device includes a process manager that can clear cache and processes (I usually like to let Android do its thing for process management) and reboot when it gets backlogged. However, the neat rocket ship for clearing out memory is nice on the quick menu settings. The menu UI is clean and easy to navigate and WAY BETTER than Samsung (don't get me wrong the Samsung Galaxy is about the best Android phone there is, but their UI is awful).

Notifications on this device are nice and clean and the submenus on the bottom are nicer than the floating menus of some other Android UI (essentially, this device is better since it is closer to the native Android UI, which is awesome (this also makes the native launcher that this device includes very small and does not waste memory).

The one thing Android users will find odd is that this Launcher does not have a All Apps area, instead all apps are on the home screen (you can group them in folders (which is what I do). If you are coming from iOS you will be very familiar with this approach as this is the normal behavior of iOS.

Camera

The camera is not as great as the Galaxy S4 or iPhone, but it is still good. You have the fun camera with all of the affects (like you get on Samsung) and the regular camera (just like with Samsung I mainly use the regular camera). The pictures are surprisingly clear on this device. I went to a museum this weekend and brought this phone (had my iPhone for backup) and used it for all of the photos. They look great! They were just as clear as my iPhone. Maybe not as high of resolution but they were super clear and good for me. The front camera is also surprisingly good. The auto focus on the camera was excellent and responsive allowing for quick photo taking at the museum and the pictures looked amazing! I actually found the pictures with this were better than my Galaxy S4, although the Galaxy S4 has a higher resolution, I think it takes too long to snap the photo or the autofocus is not as good, and I wind up with blurrier images, this phone had a quick shutter with great auto tools.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth worked great and I was able to quickly pair it with my Car (SYNC) which was able to download contacts and access text messaging.

It has Bluetooth 4.0 which is great and allows for heart rate monitors and stuff when using Strava or similar apps. My only issue (and this is not with the phone) is that some app makers (in this case TomTom) chose to specific what phones their app can run on. Their is no reason for this and with the vast number of devices showing up every day it is stupid to do this. However, because of this I cannot use TomTom MySports with this (although it more than capable of handling it). I guess some manufactures want to test on every device before allowing it on that device to limit support requests, but it is more of a nuisance and goes against the openness of Android. I am going to contact TomTom and hopefully they will change this. I tried to download the APK directly and instal it, however, they also put a license manager in their app (this is a free app), so it fails to get the license with Google Play since I did not install with Google Play and therefore aborts the start of the app

WiFi

WiFi was a bit of a problem at first. When I first got the phone and put it on WiFi I started getting this weird problem where it would be connected to WiFi but would not have Internet Access (no app), and when I would try to turn WiFi off it would not go off. it was like the process that handled WiFi was frozen (I even put it in Airplane mode and WiFi still showed that it was active and it could still see all the networks).

Well I played around in the settings and when I went to WiFi and Advance I turned off the setting for battery (or something similar) that was supposed to help with battery usage. Essentially changed all of the settings to make WiFi stay on all the time and not worry about battery. This seemed to fix the problem, WiFi has not experienced this problem since. Also, my battery life was better! (I think the process was freezing up which caused it to run forever and drain battery). If you experience this problem try turning this off in the Advance settings area for WiFi.

Another note: In Settings when I turn on the soft keys backlight it seems to be the opposite. If I turn the toggle ON they stay OFF, if I turn it OFF they are ON. In case you experience this problem, this might just be a bug.

Performance

This is where I feared this phone would fail (key word is feared, because it worked amazing). With only 1GB of RAM I did not expect much. When using the phone for general tasks (email, web, videos, streaming Pandora) it was quick and responsive. I never had any lag, I could swipe through apps with no problem and everything was fluid.

I decided to push it up a notch. I loaded some games on it. I downloaded Crazy Taxi and GTA Vice City. I expected GTA Vice City to be the problem. I started it up. It started with no problem, and started the intro to the game. I watched the opening scene which was fluid and looked great. Then I got to the game. I started off running around and the movement was fluid and looked good. I beat up some random people on the street and then stole a car and drove into a bunch of police vehicles and blew the car up. The explosion was fluid and the graphics looked really good. It was responsive and when I ran into the police department I was able to aim and shoot and and do everything as expected. It was fluid and responsive. It played the game perfectly. I hope to add a video to the review to show it playing games and other things. It handled as good as any other high end Android device.

Battery

Battery is not as great as I wish, but when you try to make a thin phone you cannot hold that much of a battery. Also, the battery is not removable, so you cannot bring a spare.

Do not get me wrong, the battery is not terrible. When taking a lot of photos and having paired with Bluetooth (in the car) and using the Map app occasionally and checking Facebook, email and web throughout the day I made it from 8am to 10pm (when it shutdown).

The next day was more of a normal day. No museum, so no heavy photo taking or long car trip with Bluetooth running and from 9am to 11pm (when I plugged it in) it was at 65%, which is actually really good! That was with general use (email, Facebook, web) I streamed a few videos on YouTube.

My main use for my phone is that I use a Bluetooth headset with Pandora when riding my bike to and from work. This is a slight drain since it uses cellular and Bluetooth for streaming music. However, for my 30 min trip to work it used 4% of the battery. Which is really good. Plus since it uses standard Micro USB I can just keep a cheap cable at work and if I fear it is getting low I can plug it in (I keep a Micro USB cable at work already for my Bluetooth headset which frequently dies).

Essentially, like all phones the screen is the drainer, if you sit their for a long time reading an article or checking email on the phone you can actually see the battery number dropping (doing this for about 30 minutes will cost about 10%). I do have battery saving mode on, but I do have WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth on. I leave these on all the time and also have Push on for everything, this is on par with my iPhone 5, so I am happy (although LTE pulls on the iPhone 5 a bit, so it is not an equal comparison).

A small annoyance is that whenever I plug in the device and unplug it seems to disable auto sync. However, I found this setting in the System Manager app (rocket ship icon) under Power. You can stop it from here from turning Sync off each time Power Saver Mode activates (which is when you unplug it).

Accessories

One of the other problems with brands that are not the 'big boys' is that accessory makers (like Belkin) do not target the device (probably part of the reason they include case and screen protector). However, I do not want a case for this phone (you get a clear one with the device), but why would you want to hide this beautiful device? (just be careful when using it, and keep it out in the open so people can see its beauty and you see that envy in their eyes when they hold their plastic Samsung).

However, I do need an armband (that is about the only accessory I use) for running/cycling. Good news, this is about the same size as a Galaxy S4 (or S3 and I think S5) so get an armband for that device and it fits perfect. It is a lot thinner than the S# devices, but I think an armband would be fine. Plus the Belkin armband for the S4 has a flap on top and the Blu Vivo Air fits in it perfectly.

Also, because of the iPhone like slot for the SIM card It was easy for it to hold the Nano SIM and a Micro SIM adapter to make my Nano SIM card fit in the new phone.

Storage

It has 16GB, but as we all know that means a lot less than 16GB that we can use. Like some Android devices it partitions storage for Phone storage and System. Everything I installed seems to get put on System and I ran out of space. I was able to quickly (in App Settings) move items over to Phone storage (certain apps only), but still, I wish they would not partition it like this. Some of the larger apps (like GTA Vice City) will not move over to Phone Storage (I guess fear of it being removable). I know they do this since the Phone Storage will mount to a computer like mass storage, but I wish they would give you an option at first boot (maybe do you want to use Mass Storage, or do you want the phone UI disabled when mounted to a computer)?

Also, this does not support an SD card, so make sure that you know the 16GB is all you get. This used to be limiting to me (coming from the world iOS), hover, I no longer even load my own music or videos to the device since I can just stream them on YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video I just install apps now.

Software

My favorite thing about this! No Bloatware! No AT&T Navigator, no Samsung WhatsOn or any crap I do not use or need. It has the basics (it does include their own music/video player, I believe this is a requirement for Android, but you can easily make Google Music/Video the main ones). All of the apps on the phone are basic apps and you can download any additional apps from Google Play or Amazon App Store.

Also, I found an app included with the Phone "System Manager" is a great place to look. It has all of the features that you care about for keeping your phone clean (it is like an extension of Settings). It has a one click clear cache which is nice and a process killer (I do not usually use these and let Android manage its self). The settings for fine tuning power saver mode can be found here (this is where you can stop it from turning Sync off each time you charge).

Summary

In the end this is about the best Android device you can get for $200. I originally found the Galaxy S4 for about $250 and got it when it was on sale, but normally any of the 'big brand' phones run around $500-$800. Which is not great for prepaid folks (I despise contracts and find that carriers want way too much money for what they are doing [Activation fee for using my own phone, what are you activating? it is GSM]). This phone is great and I am really happy with it. It is as good as my iPhone 5 and works just as well. When I was last shopping around for a phone (when I got the S4) I saw some Blu devices but being a brand I never heard of I was not willing to take a chance, this phone has shown be that Blu is a good contender and this phone is really nice. We will see how they do with updating (another downfall of smaller brands is that they are sometimes behind on rolling out updates), but the device came with KitKat so that is a good sign. Since they use a minimalistic take on the native Android UI it should not take too long to get Lollipop ready.

I am very happy with this phone and it has replaced my iPhone for now, I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a beautiful phone that looks super elegant and does not cost much I am very happy this and love the look, feel, and performance!!!

PROS:
- Super slim
- Weighs almost nothing
- Works on T-Mobile
- Price is right
- Build quality

CONS:
- Slow (only has 1GB of RAM)
- Battery doesn't last very long
- Camera is not so desirable
- No LTE

OVERVIEW:

Just got this phone in hand today from Amazon. As usual, Amazon wins with fast shipping!

I first opened the phone and just WOW. It's so slim. It's so light. You really can't compare it to anything else. After using this for an afternoon, my iPhone 6 feels chunky and heavy. Crazy!

Booting it up for the first time, it was a bit sluggish. The 1GB of RAM is really limiting on the device. As soon as I was running more than a handful of apps, the phone really slowed down.

I installed Google Now Launcher and several of the other stock Google apps from the Play Store and after a reboot, it feels a lot faster.

Overall, the device performs worse than the likes of a Moto G, but no other device in this price range can hold a candle to the design and build quality of the Vivo Air.

I ordered this phone in february and I really loved it until a few days ago. I was cleaning something off the back of the phone and the glass just cracked. This phone is great but to be honest I felt like I was lied to by BLU, I have a hard time believing that the "Gorilla" glass on my phone would have broken so easily. What is more frustrating is that I contacted BLU about this and they responded by telling me that it was my fault the glass wasn't strong and that It would cost around $130 to replace. This phone was working very well for me but now I am just disappointed and frustrated with the lack of any real response on the part of BLU. Think very carefully before purchasing this phone, be ready for the build quality to be extremely light duty.

UPDATE 4/29/15

I received another email from BLU a few days after I initially posted this review and it stated that my repair cost would actually only be $25 to repair that back glass panel. I thought that was reasonable so I sent them my phone, they have had my phone since the 6th of April and they have not emailed me or called me with a single update and when I call I am told my phone is being diagnosed. So after 4 weeks they still have my phone and I am no closer to getting it back. This has been the most frustrating customer service experience I have ever had, I have begun to call them everyday until this problem is taken care of. Be aware their customer service is lackluster to say the least.

For the price this is a no brainer! Beautiful, thin, light, and quite the convention piece! Set it on your table while your out to eat, and watch what happens!
The good stuff outweigh the bad (unless your a heavy user). I use WiFi as often as possible, and it almost always stays more than half strength anywhere in the house compared to many other phones I've used. Screen looks great. Keep in mind my opinion is based on two things, I've used every "flagship" out there and I'm considering the 200$ price for an unlocked device. I did several things to make this a faster and more familiar experience. I'd recommend installing a third party launcher.
What comes with it you ask?
1. Nice box (my box was black if the white is your choice you get a white box nice touch)
2. Charger with separate data/charging cable
3. A CASE! yes a thin TPU or soft plastic that covers the headphone jack and charging port nice touch.
4. A screen protector (I would advise using the provided case it still keeps the phone super thin and protects it it is very fragile I'm guessing).
I am on AT&T and I get 4G a lot of people are confused by that 4G is actually below LTE but is plenty fast to stream music and watch a video or two. I have been very impressed with the phone other than speaker volume, listen to music on your device often it's not very loud I'm afraid. In call volume is fine for the ear speaker. other than the loudspeaker volume and small battery this is a winner, so what are you waiting for buy it!!!

This phone was a real surprise for me. I'd never heard of the brand but decided to check it out since my Samsung Galaxy S4 is 1.5 years old.
- it's thin (just about half the thickness of my Samsung - see photo).
- it's light (4.3oz in its case, vs. 5.6oz for the Samsung in its case)
- the battery lasts a VERY long time I charged it on a Friday when I received it. That charge lasted 7 full days of intermittent use (photo taking, adjusting settings, updating, synchronizing, internet browsing and messaging).
- user friendly. It doesn't take much to figure it out. Settings are well laid out and fairly easy to manage I haven't even touched the manual yet. The biggest change was the pages of apps scroll up/down vs. side to side on all the other phones I've had.
- "FakeCall" callback/escape feature. There is a button you can push to help you get out of an unwanted situation. Once selected, it will call you back 15 seconds later and a female voice says something about needing a file. I tried it out approximately 8 feet away from my husband and he could hear that someone was on the line. He said it sounds like someone is talking - which only makes the decoy call more legit. VERY handy for lots of reasons.
- guest mode. You can set this phone up to be used by another person while keeping all your information, photos, etc. private and password protected. The other person can use the features but can't access your data.
- comes with a case, charger, screen protector, earbuds and a printed manual.
- earbuds are pretty good. They aren't quite as clear as my Sony earbuds, but there is decent bass. They have a pause button on them so you can easily pause your music to speak to someone, then resume, without fiddling with your phone.
- can pick up FM stations. This seems a bit old-timey, but in case of emergency situations FM stations often have good broadcast information on local area info (like after tornadoes when cell towers are down).
Camera and video cam features work as expected, audio recorder is sensitive, and apps open quickly. The screen is sharp and bright. I really don't have anything negative to say about this phone. The only thing missing is a % on battery life vs. just the icon representation, but that can be added with an app very easily.

I think this is very much worth the money. Recommend!

 And a little company in Florida that rebadges off-brand Chinese cell phones (the Vivo Air is a Gionee Elife s5.1) and tweaks their software has just unseated the Moto G as the best budget smartphone that isn't a piece of crap, and in the process has also given Apple a run for their money in terms of industrial design. Very impressive.

Let's start with the design of the Vivo Air. It's impossibly thin, so thin that it makes the iPhone 6 feel chunky in comparison. It's so light it feels like you're holding an empty housing for the phone that's missing the guts, yet nope, that's actually the phone. The very first thing that will hit you when you take this phone out of the box is how insanely light it is. Next, the thinness. Thereafter, how well put together the phone is. It feels like a highly premium device, and looks like like an iPhone 5s and a Sony Xperia Z3 had a love child. The shape and aluminum bands around the sides say iPhone, but the all glass front and back say Xperia Z3. I can't stress enough how premium this phone looks and feels. It can give the most expensive phones on the market a run for their money in terms of premium look and feel. And it's $200 unlocked.

If you compare stats side by side between the Vivo Air and the Moto G 2014, the Vivo Air wins in every statistic. It is more powerful, has a nicer screen (unless you're one of the weird few who prefers an IPS display to a Super Amoled), and has a better camera. The benchmarks tests I've seen back that up.

I mentioned the display. It's great. Yeah, it's only 720p, but given that the screen is only 4.8in, 720p gets you above 300 ppi anyway, so you can't see individual pixels. It has all the great saturation and infinite contrast of a super amoled screen. Really, you will only be happy with this display if you buy this phone.

The camera is pretty "meh", but hey, they had to cut corners somewhere. In decent lighting it'll take decent pics.

Performance is good for a budget phone. The UI and apps run smoothly and quickly most of the time. Really nothing to complain about there given the price of the phone. Feels on par with the Moto G for responsiveness and consistency of the UI.

The software deserves a thumbs up, although one part deserves a big massive thumbs down. The stock launcher is awful. It may actually be the worst launcher for android in existence. Icons are randomly placed and can't be put in any logical order, and there is no app drawer. Fortunately, this is 100% fixed by simply downloading a free launcher, such as Google Now, Nova, Themer, etc.

The rest of the software is well done, however. It's stock android with a few tweaks, not some heavy skin. The tweaks made are all good ones and well thought out. Double tap to unlock, draw a character to unlock and launch right into an app (and you can choose which app is launched by which character drawn), battery percentage on the task bar options, more sophisticated incoming call and ongoing call screens with useful options added, revamped notification area and pull down menu with added options and toggles.

Reception has been good, as has call quality. My test caller said I sounded very clear on his end. The earpiece volume is good and is clear to listen to. The failure here is the speakerphone. Apparently on a speakerphone call I sounded good to my test caller, but the speaker itself is absolutely terrible. Quiet and tinny. Pretty disappointing really.

Battery life seems quite good. I'm not sure what Blu did, but the phone uses almost no power in standby. Standby time seems like it would be over a week. In use, power consumption is not bad at all.

Oh and the phone comes with a case, screen protector, and earbuds. If you use such things, that adds to the value.

I am not sure what more I can say. If you have AT&T, or have T-mobile and live in a city where T-mobile has 1900 MHz coverage, this may be the best new phone you can buy for $200 off contract, all things considered.

I have now owned the Air for about a month. Previous to this, I have owned a slew of android and ios and symbian powered devices over the years. Still no windows yet My most recent phones were the IPhone 4S and the HTC One M7.

Coming from a flagship device, my goal was to cut cost, so if I had to cut some features, I was willing to do that. That being said, from a flagship point of view, the device should feel solid, look beautiful, have crisp clean lines, and have excellent materials in the build. My M7 had all of those, and now my Air has all of those as well. In addition to the flagship look, it is very thin, and VERY light. Those were two of my main selling points.

I carry my phones around in my pocket without bulky cases because I like having a phone the way they were designed. I run my Vivo Air straight up vanilla (besides the launcher) because that's the way they were meant, so I typically never use screen protectors or cases. I don't rely on some thin plastic thing to protect it from a fall; I don't drop phones. I have never broken a screen in my 15 years of owning cells phones and don't plan to anytime soon, especially with the Air. That being said, one potential con is not realizing the phone is even in my pocket at all. Yes this thing still has a fairly large screen and footprint, but it SO light and thin that you can barely feel it in your pocket. I LOVE that part.

Internally, despite having an "off brand" octa-core processor, it still running on technology from two years ago. So, everything is generally a couple of milliseconds slower than a current flagship. Can you tell, really? No, not at all. It still feels very snappy and responsive. Call quality is excellent, battery life completely boggles my mind still. I end a day having used GPS, internet, wifi, downloading stuff, playing games, using skype video, and making phone calls and still plug in the phone at night with 40% battery remaining; unbelievable! I had to charge my M7 constantly and always carried around an external battery. Since the switch, I haven't even touched my external battery.

The stock launcher is no good like everyone else says, it works yes, but it's nothing special and doesn't allow many nice android features. I use GO Launcher and that works pretty well for me for the most part.

The camera is mediocre, but WAY better than my purple panther (nick name for my M7's camera). It takes very nice video of my year old son if I'm not moving too much. Button layout is fine, I love the fact that it still has a 3.5mm jack with FM radio so I can listen to NPR at work.

If you are stuck on an IPhone 6, get this (because it's better) and then install an IOS launcher of your choosing. I am unlike other people where as I do not flaunt my phone around, I keep it hidden in my pocket. I have a flash notification and the vibrator on at all times so I never miss a call and sounds won't annoy me then. The lock screen has some nice stock features so I haven't attempted to change that yet.

The only complaint that I have (which doesn't warrant a loss of a star) is that Blu has not allowed me to run a daydream at all. I use my phones as a desktop clock, and I can't because daydream does not work. Fix that and it's about perfect.

Would I buy it again? Absolutely. If I even have to buy two more phones in the next two years instead of buying 1 iphone, I'm still in the lead cost wise. Under $200 just simply can't be beat for this quality of a phone.