Just got it today. So far performance is ok. Not as smooth as my Moto X (2014) or Nexus 5, but it works. Installed google keyboard and google launcher, and that seemed to help (could be placebo though). Will update later on as to battery. No issues installing all the basic apps and a few more. Seems like the perfect work/backup phone. I think lollipop will help smooth things out. That is my only complaint so far.

When I received it, it was at around 66% battery.

UPDATE 1:

It has been 15 hours and 49 minutes since the phone had a full charge. I have been using it all day. It is at 55%. This included downloading all apps, and installing everything. Screen on time so far is almost 4 hours. Biggest battery drain is Wifi from installing everything. I have not run out of space on this phone yet. It also has great features for privacy. You can block apps from knowing you gps, network id, accessing mobile data, accessing your microphone, camera, contacts etc. You can do this specifically for each app. I have never seen such customization in regards to privacy.

Another big drain was the fact I didn't have a sim card in for a few hours, so it was searching for cell signal, which drains all android phones, and even iPhones. Once I entered airplane mode with wifi on, that mistake on my part was fixed.

Finally, you can easily enter developer mode, and limit background processes to 2-3, which REALLY SPEEDS UP THE PHONE. You won't miss texts or emails, it just scraps app data after you have stopped using it as a recent app. Everyone should do this. Go to about my phone in settings, and tap build number 7 times. Then go to developer mode, and scroll to the bottom. Change background processes, and your phone will get smoother right away.

This phone is great, I have been using it as a back up because my Moto X (2014) has the worst battery of any phone I have owned. I sync 3 calendars, 3 emails with push, etc., and use my phones heavily throughout the day. The performance hit is worth the boost in battery.

UPDATE 2: So I used it until it got down to 4% (actually 2%, but only have screen caps @ 4%).

Screen on time: 6 hours 59 minutes 58 seconds. (8% battery life). Used variable settings from bright to lowest to auto.
Total on time: 1 day 7 hours 25 minutes 8 seconds. (What is that 31 hours?)
Wifi=29%, phone idle=23%, cell standby (forgot to enter airplane mode, no sim for half the time)=19%, facebook=12%, screen=8%, etc. etc.

This was after heavy use. With normal or light use, I can see this lasting multiple days easily.

Overall (TL;DR):

I like the Blu Studio Energy overall. Blu has managed to put a huge battery in a midrange phone and has done so at an excellent price. The performance on the phone isn’t great, but it’s good enough. The additional software features Blu has included are really nice and actually useful (looking at you Samsung). The Blu Studio Energy would be an excellent phone for someone who just wants a reliable smartphone for everyday use. Think of your grandma, kids, or that other family member who are taking their first steps into the smartphone world. This is perfect for them! If you are into high end phones with the best cameras and super-fast processors, this is not the phone for you.

Pros + Cons:

+A 5,000 mAh battery!
+Useful add on features
+Mostly stock Android
+Feels great in hand
+Lots of freebies in box
-Performance is lacking
-Needs more RAM
-Takes quite a while to charge the battery

Body and Screen:

The back and sides of the phone are plastic but it looks nice and feels quite well built. I did notice that the volume and power keys had a bit of a wiggle but what can you expect for a phone this price. The phone feels nice in your hand due to the curved back.
The screen is only 720p but text is perfectly clear and legible. The colors do pop quite a bit but there is a slightly washed out look to the screen. Don’t worry though, it isn’t bad and you won’t notice it much after a while.

Features:

This phone really surprised me on the features. One of the biggest surprises for me is that you can enable a double tap to wake in which you tap twice on the screen while it is asleep and it wakes the phone. Blu has also included the ability to launch apps by drawing one of four specific shapes on the screen while it is asleep. You can choose to launch either an app or a pick a contact to dial directly.
Beyond the smart gestures, Blu has included a task killer and customizable quick toggle settings shortcuts on the settings portion of the pull down notification shade. You can customize the order of the quick toggle settings but, unfortunately, you cannot remove them from the screen. Blu has also included a guest mode setting that can be customized to include access only to certain apps. This may come in handy in situations such as sharing your phone with a stranger or with a child.

Performance:

Performance on the Blu Studio Energy is somewhat lacking. The phone works fine for most things but every once in a while there is a slight stutter when flipping through home screens or when multitasking with multiple apps. If you’re only checking the web or using Facebook, and you can stand an occasional screen stutter here and there, then this phone will be fine for you.

Speaker:

The speaker on the phone is loud enough, but not overly loud. The sound is adequate but somewhat tinny at loud volumes.

Camera:

So far, the shots I have taken with the camera have come out clear with plenty of detail. The colors aren’t incredibly vivid, but the pictures do look pretty nice. The front facing camera … works. Then again, who expects to take great pictures with a front facing camera?
The camera software is quite nice. You can enable the camera to take the picture by normal button press, touch anywhere on the screen, when someone smiles, or when someone makes a V with their fingers (I couldn’t get this one to work). Capture modes include panorama, eraser best face, face beauty, best shot, and EV bracket shot. You can also pick from a number of cartoonish picture frames if you would like. Lastly, the camera includes all the standard camera features such as white balance, color tone, and quality settings.

Battery:

I haven’t had time to evaluate the battery completely but I am sure the 5,000 mAh battery will last for a couple days easily. Four days though? Maybe, but I will have to wait and see. Also, the phone can be used to charge other devices.

Looked and looked for a no-contract phone that would work for my needs. I am coming from a Note 3 on Verizon, and I liked the functions, battery life and screen size, so I was looking for something similar. I only rarely used the s-pen and never used the dual-window function so I was OK going back to a "non-note" phone. I am using this phone on Cricket and have had solid service (please note, this is GSM service, not CDMA, as in ATT no Verizon/Sprint).

Came across BLU phones while searching for Unlocked options and looked through the selection of Life Pure XL, Vivo IV, Vivo Air, Studio 6.0 LTE and finally Studio Energy. There are tons of reviews available on all of these if you are curious. Quite a few new phones from BLU at CES2015 with professional reviews of those available online. Also considered Huawei Mate 2, just-released Huawei Mate 7, Note 4 ($$$), Moto G, Moto X ($500), iRulu V2 and IRulu U2S. Based on battery life, I also looked at expanded batteries for my Note 3 (lots of negatives on those reviews) and I also considered the BlackBerry Passport. I do a lot of email on my phone for work and also quite a bit of texting, so I thought maybe a physical keyboard would work for me. However, after reading Passport reviews (keep in mind I was very excited about this phone), I realized I would miss the expanded App environment from Android (don't be angry that I never had an iPhone, I am not saying anything bad about that phone/ecosystem, and I would miss the expanded App environment available there as well) - for example, I found that I would no longer be able to use my phone to run the Bank of America app as it was no longer supported for Blackberry 10.2, and with no local branch in my area, that would be difficult for me.

So it came down to battery and Android 4.4 for me, and this phone has both. I am also not worried or excited about Lollipop, and I have read many are upset that the promised update from BLU has not been made available yet.

Upon receiving the phone, I was genuinely surprised at how solid it felt and the quality of the build. The 720x1080 screen (IPS not AMOLED) is very good. Very very good, and I don't miss my Note 3 screen at all. The phone looks good in the pictures, better in my hand. Quite nice.

I use my phone as a reader with the Kindle app quite a bit, and I actually prefer the "flatter" (some may say duller?) image vs the more glaring AMOLED output, even when completely dimmed.

Netflix/Hulu/YouTube videos look great.

Call volume and clarity is very good. Speakerphone is average for a cellphone and sounds clear and intelligible with no buzzing/muffling.

Specs say 8GM internal and 1GB RAM. I typically have 200-300MB unused RAM and have noticed no problems with this setup. I actually expected 1GB not to be enough, and I found out that for how I use the phone, it is completely unnecessary. I don't store a lot of music on my phone and most of my photos end up on Facebook, so I have quite a bit of the ROM left at this point (>6GB) and I still haven't loaded a microSD.

Core is fast, but I do notice occasional lagging. It does not interfere with my use of the phone, but I do notice it occasionally. This is most noticeable if you are downloading/updating Apps and trying to use the phone. I agree with previous reviewers that changing a few settings in Developer mode speeds things up a bit.

I am using the provided Launcher and I like it. I like the double-tap to wake, gestures (4 selectable - I have mine set to Messaging, Facebook, Camera and Phone) to open apps and I have filled in the rest with additional Apps.

UPDATE - have to turn off/on the Gestures any time the phone is restarted. A nuisance item. Have seen this in other reviews as well.

I have loaded the following apps: Amazon Shopping, AquaMail, Bitstrips, BofA, ConvertPad, Fidelity, Geek, GolfLogix, Google Sky Map (fun), Hulu, Kindle, LinkedIn, MapMyRide, Netflix, Pandora, Polaris Office, Settings Extended, SiriusXM, Stocard, Swype + Dragon, Textra (to bypass 300k MMS limit), TouchTunes, Transparent Weather Clock, Trivia Crack (more fun), Trulia, Zillow, Video Player for Android, Visual Voicemail, Waze, WeatherBug, WiFi Analyzer and GPS Status. I use the native email app for Exchange setup with work email and it works well.

I have not figured out how to set a Home screen on the launcher and have gotten used to Home being the far left screen.

UPDATE - I still have not figured out how to select an alternate Home screen other than it being the far left screen, but screens positions can be swapped by long-press on the left button, then hold and drag the screens around. Because of this, I am using the tiling feature more than I have in the past on previous phones.

There is a small notch in the back cover just above the volume rocker for use to begin to removing the back cover for access to SIM 1 and 2 and SD slots. Didn't find that right away and maybe mentioning it will help someone else. Battery is back there too, but not removable. I think the back cover on the Energy is superior to my Note 3 (I never felt like it quite fastened solidly).

The phone is thicker than my Note 3, but I like the additional thickness for better one-handed grip. It is a bit heavier, but to me it feels solid.

The included earbud headphones work well for music and phone calls. Also included is a screen protector and silicone case. The case fits well and has a lip around the front edge of the screen to protect if you like to lay your phone facedown like I do (plus keeps the phone up off the table if your knucklehead friends spill their beer often, as mine do).

Call quality is better in most cases than I was getting on my Note 3. I suspect it is due primarily to poor Verizon coverage in my area, especially at work (even though Verizon coverage maps say this shouldn't be the case). I also think HSPA+ and use of the lower bandwidth frequencies for this phone provides me with more consistent connection, so my connectivity experience has actually improved. Imagine that! You would not have convinced me of this prior to my trying this phone. LTE was great, but only occasionally did I see >10MBps data rates (Speedtest) and the rest of the time the battery was abused while trying to connect. I get 2-3MBps (Speedtest) on this phone through Cricket (HSPA+ limited to 4MBps and LET limited to 8MBps on Cricket) and it is suitable for my use.

I run my apps wide open now, Automatic Push on Exchange, 10 minute updates on Facebook, 10 minute updates on Aquamail, 15 minute updates on Transparent Weather Clock, Kindle whispersync, and even in the "signal hole" at work, I get good connection and updates, and the Energy Battery is a BEAST. I have used this phone for 2-3hr calls, tethered hotspot, all apps, etc for days and I routinely go to bed with 40% charge remaining. Back calculating time on with remaining battery yields 26-28hr estimated "on" time before I would hit 0%. I have finally quit dragging a charger cable around with me wherever I go. It is more liberating than I expected.

UPDATE - found out I ordered the International version, not the US version. Ordered the US version for my gf and she is getting even better battery life than I am, probably due to 2 other frequencies available.

Battery use showed WLAN use at the top of the list for the first few days. Other reviews informed me that there was a setting on the WLAN/Advanced that allows Apps to search WiFi even when it is off. Gained about 10% battery life remaining by the end of the day by deselecting that option, and WLAN moved down the list to 4th-6th position for total battery use after this change.

Haven't really used the camera much, so I can't comment on functions or image quality. Sorry. Note for new Android users, to take a screenshot press power and down-volume button at the same time. I did like the hand edge swipe screenshot setup on Samsung and wish I could find an App that would add that function to this launcher.

UPDATE - photos I have taken since my initial review are fully suitable for cellphone quality. But I don't expect separate camera quality photos from a $150 cellphone.

The phone also comes with a cable to use as a reverse charger for other devices. I haven't tried this yet.

UPDATE - tried reverse charging and charged the gf Note 3 up 10% for 11% reduction in my phone battery.

I believe the phone also has NFC, but I never used this on my Note 3 and haven't yet tried it on my Energy.

Overall a very good phone and works well for my needs. I am pleased.

UPDATE - based on several weeks with this phone, I have gotten one for my gf and she replaced her Note 3 with it. I have also gotten numerous positive comments on the build quality from friends and co-workers and many are looking at a purchase.

UPDATE 2 - This phone is the Gionee Marathon M3. Came out from BLU approximately 4 months after Gionee released the M3. The Gionee Elife S7 (http://gionee.co.in/S7/) will likely be coming out in August - 2Gb RAM, 13MP camera, AMOLED full HD, 4G LTE, but only 2800mAh battery, but I'm still waiting anxiously to see how it compares to the Studio Energy. Likely this will fall under the BLU Vivo line.

*I got this phone about 16 hours ago, so this may change.

The phone is exactly what I feel is being advertised, a really solid mid-range Android phone with huge battery life.

Pros (so far):
Battery life (I got the phone with 75% battery and I haven't charged it yet and I'm sitting at around 40% after a bunch of use including setup/downloading all my apps)
Feels nice for a $149 phone
Lots of accessories included

Cons (so far):
Slippery edge, could lead to drops
If you use Lux (or an app like it), the screen does not take well to color manipulation. By turning down the temp of the colors, it totally over saturates yellows.

Over notes:
Blu has some cool features like a custom tool box on the notification screen and system manager that breaks down charge time and power consumption in more detail than stock android.

The phone seemed a little jittery when navigating around compared to the Nexus 5 I'm coming from (of course it did, right!?) but I put the Google launcher on and switched to the google keyboard and it seems super smooth now.

I am compelled to share my experience with this phone. Taking into consideration everything about the BLU Studio Energy, it is a great phone.

For personal use, I have a 2014 Moto X, which I bought in the last quarter of 2014. I use the BLU Studio Energy for work. I honestly think that if I had access to the BLU Studio Energy beforehand, I probably wouldn't have gotten the Moto X.

I have gone a full week on a single battery charge. I haven't had the time to figure out just how far I can push it, though, but I expect it would last up to a week and a half. I'm not talking about just once! I've unplugged it on Monday morning and charged it overnight the following Sunday for three weeks in a row. Each time before plugging it in, the system reported between 25-40%. I couldn't be happier.

"For work?" Ok, not just for work. I've been using it for personal use, too--mostly because I ride on public trans in Chicago and would much rather have my $150 work phone snatched from my hands than my personal phone. I've considered moving my personal sim from the Moto to the Blu for convenience, but the risk is losing everything at once.

I am not trying to conserve battery life:
- For work, I use a standard "not-so-good" enterprise app for secure communications before, during, and after work. ;)
- I use Bluetooth headphones to listen to Spotify, Pandora and other streaming services during my commute.
- I never turn off Wifi.
- I hardly ever remember to turn off Bluetooth. In fact, this week I finally decided to "forget about it."
- I subscribe to, listen to, and automatically sync podcasts
- I use Google Voice for calls (so I didn't have to update my phone number at work)
- I use Google Hangouts SMS for texting with co-workers.
- I regularly use Play Newsstand, YouTube, Pocket, and Chrome during my commute.
- I regularly play games during my commute and often after. Games include side-scrolling shooters, puzzle games, and rogue-like RPGs.
- I sometimes use a handheld game console emulator to play games.

That about sums up my experience. Here are some other things you may want to know:

Is it slow? No.
is it slippery fast? No.
Does it lag? Sometimes, but not enough to break the user experience.
Does it work with T-mobile (Chicagoland)? Yes.
Is it heavy? A bit. Certainly not cumbersome.
How's the case? Not bad at all. Glad it came with one!
Will it upgrade to Lollipop? BLU says the update is coming in June.
Did you root it? No, due to the strict requirements of the enterprise app.
*How does Bluetooth sound? Volume is a bit low. I'd like it to be a notch or two higher, but I haven't checked to see if there are settings I should change.
Would you buy it again? Yes.
Was it worth the $150? Abso-f-ing-lutely.

* UPDATE: Bluetooth is fine. My Bluetooth headset has it's own volume control that I thought was synced with the phone volume. Turns out I can turn it up on my device even farther than the phone.

UPDATE:

For People who are having Aux Cable issues:

Some phones are being shipped with a hardware flaw. The phone is not able to switch the speakers off when aux cables are plugged in. Car speakers only catch the treble, while the song is blaring on the phone speakers, no base. Downloading the SoundAbout App on Google Play will fix it; you have to manually toggle between the two modes.
You have to choose the "WiredHeadset behavior" option and then tap on the "Wired headset detection" option. When you want music to go through aux cables, go to "Media audio" and choose "Wired Headphones" Option

This phone is better than I expected. I am upgrading my review.

What I like:
Good bargain phone.
Really long battery life; never feel bothered that I need to charge it, even at bedtime.
Really loud speakers.
Video quality is pretty good.
Good feel and finish, but the glossier side panel finish is easily chipped

What can be made better:
The internal menu lags a bit.
Some phones are being shipped with a hardware flaw. The phone is not able to switch the speakers off when aux cables are plugged in. Car speakers only catch the treble, while the song is blaring on the phone speakers, no base. Downloading the SoundAbout App on Google Play will fix it; you have to manually toggle between the two modes.
You have to choose the "Wider Headset behavior" option and then tap on the "Wired headset detection" option. Then once your app is playing music you have to go to "Media audio" and choose "Wired Headphones" Option.
Another Fix is plugging in headphones, and turning the music on, and then removing the headphones and plugging in the aux cable.
Front facing camera is really bad, no possibility of taking a decent selfie, even in natural light.
Back facing camera is O.K, has a slow shutter rate, very easily blurs pictures.
This phone only has 1 GB of ram, and that takes a toll on performance if you are multitasking.
Keyboard lags in some apps.
Keeps switching from silent to vibrate mode.

Honestly, I mostly prefer iOS, but couldn't pass this thing up. It has a 5000 Milliamp hour battery. Yes, 5000 mah! With heavy usage, including conference calls all day at work, email, audio books, podcasts, photo / video, constant social media, I can get through TWO FULL DAYS without charging! If you open the back of the phone, you can see that the bulk of the space inside is taken up by the enormous battery. I can take this on weekend camping trips and not even have to conserve power, even using the camera and flashlight a lot. It even comes with a reverse charging cable so you can power or charge other devices from it. Other than the battery it is a modestly, yet adequately specced phone, but it costs only $150 new and factory unlocked. I can sell my iPhone 6 and have enough to cover the cost of this plus payoff my contract and save $50 per month on my wireless bill! Hell, at that price I don't even need insurance.

The cpu is a 1.3 ghz quad core Mediatek, which is not an amazing chip, but certainly capable. The screen bright and beautiful. It's HD, not retina, but very clear and sharp, with good color balance. The touch is very responsive. The build quality feels very solid and aesthetically the device is minimal and good looking. I quite expected the device to be much thicker. It's a bit thicker than the flagship phones but it's not thick by any means. It feels comfortable in the hand. It came with a silicone case, which is a nice freebie bonus, but I found that it made the phone feel thick and took away from its comfortable sleekness. I much prefer it without the case. I really like the arrangement of the lock button and volume rockers. Seriously, it's quite good all around. Coming from iPhone, I have gotten very used to having the headphone jack on the bottom of the phone, which makes for better cable management. I feel like BLU could have done this without increasing the cost of the device, but what do I know. I'd like more local storage, more RAM and a fingerprint sensor, but hey, it's $150 outright and unlocked, not $650 and contract locked like the flagship phones that have those features.

Update:

I had to sent it back because it stopped recognizing any SIM cards in both slots. I sent it back to BLU and they replaced it under warranty, but it took almost a month to complete the whole transaction and I had to pay the shipping. I'm glad I hadn't sold my previous phone yet or I would have been stuck. The phone has 1 GB RAM, which is enough for regular tasks, but it's not enough to run any widgets or special features. The Wifi signal is not strong and is prone to dropouts. Lastly, the camera is terrible, just terrible. Every picture is blurry unless the subject is perfectly still. Even flowers drifting in a light breeze is too much movement. Also the color balance is way off, making everyone's hair look oddly dark. The front facing camera is even worse and is practically unusable. On a positive note, I discovered that the reverse charging cable that is included in the box also works to connect USB devices to the phone, so I can connect my DSLR camera directly to the phone and upload stunning photos directly to instagram and facebook without dumping them to a computer first.

I want to give this phone 4 stars. It is now my daily driver and I mostly like it, but even at this low price I can't give it more than 3 stars. If the camera was just decent I would give it 4 stars. If the camera was decent and it had 2GB RAM I'd give it 5.

So I've been looking at YouTube reviews of this phone and the lag aspect made me nervous. It does have a bit of a lag to it on stock, but if you install Nova launcher and set the settings to performance vs animations, then go into system settings>developers mode and turn off all animations as well as only allow 2-3 background processes at a time, the phone gets pretty snappy. Then go ahead and install SwiftKey keyboard which makes things run even smoother and turn off vibration for key strokes.

Lastly, buying a big SD card and installing as many apps as you can on it will help with the small storage space this phone has.

I was thinking of sending it back until I did all these things, now I love it and am happy with it as a budget phone.

Update: charged the phone all night last night, and used it all day today, sometimes pretty heavily. I just had to put it on the charger at 16% battery, at 10:30 pm. I can see it lasting for days if only used to make calls and send texts, but not as a heavy user. But heck, even getting a full day's worth out of a phone without having to charge it is great in my book. Battery life may even improve once I'm not in the "setting my phone up" phase.

I've also included a photo I took with the camera on this. It's not as good a camera as my old iPhone 4S But it's not terrible either. The pink around the edges is a little frame thing you can select.

Update #2:

So far it's still pretty good but I am missing the camera on my iPhone 4S. I mainly take pictures of my kids and none of them come out as clear as they did even using an older iPhone camera. It's a bit frustrating.

I have had the phone for two days!! It exceeded my expectations so much that I am writing this review.

Great phone all around. I will like to tell you that if you were thinking about getting a high end phone with all the bells and whistles and the holes in your wallet go ahead I won't stop you. However do not expect fireworks out of this humble yet elegant machine. What has always attracted me to android has been how they are able to offer a great phone for a low price. This phone does just that! If you have no expectations as I did you will be pleasantly surprised.
What sold me about BLU is that they seem to care for their customers by even including a case and screen protector with their phones. High end phones don't even want to include a headset. This touched my heart BLU!

Onto Looks:

The phone feels very solid. It has some weight to it, but not enough to turn you off, rather it makes it feel like you are holding a powerful machine and not a feather on your hand. For having a 5000 Mah battery in there they do a great job in keeping the thickness, and the weight to a reasonable and even surprising ratio. The speaker is loud and crisp. The camera focuses quickly. I got a 64gb memory card and the amount of power this instills in me is almost intolerable.

Screen:

This deserves is very own category because when I bought this phone I didn't expect much of the screen, but in fact the screen is beautiful. I have a fancy Samsung Galaxy S tablet with a 2K screen, and although this one does not surpass it, to my uncultured eye it does not fall too short. I was completely amazed. When the phone turned on for the first time I was in awe that this only cost $150. The screen is bright and nice to look at. Sometimes I just leave the screen on an stare at the home screen with your mouth open admiring the beauty and you don care because the battery won't die.

Performance:

This is where I got a little scared..Theoretically this phone should not lag based solely on the specs. BLU has made some efforts to add some features but at the same time they cannot compete with the many years of refinement that stock vanilla Android has gone through. So immediately I realized that the lag could be dealt away with and I did. Here are the four most buggy features: 1- The drop down menu (this you cannot change, but you get used to it after a while) 2- Change the stock launcher. I am running the Google Now launcher and it runs flawless and is beautiful. 3- Change in Developer Settings the max amount of processes to 3. 4- If the keyboard is giving you lag, I am using the SwiftKey Keyboard just fine. Do this and you have got a perfect phone for many years. Besides these four things I noticed practically no lag at all and have enjoyed using it every time.

Should you get this phone? Yes!! The battery right now is 60% after 17 hours off the charger and 4 hours of screen on time. That is amazing. There is nothing that a premium brand name phone can do that mine can't, and it doesn't die!! I cannot stress that enough. Also you are not giving up any good looks in the process.

You may be new to hearing about this brand (as I was too), but after owning one of these for a few days now I am now a huge believer in this brand. I own a iphone 6 plus myself, but I needed another backup phone for my family. This seemed to fit the bill perfectly for the price range and flexibility on networks you can buy service from.

The huge IPS screen is very reminiscent in quality to my iphone so it looks amazing which shocked me for the price tag. The 8MP camera (2MP front cam) does its job nicely and adds good value to this mid range phone. This phone can be expanded up to 64GB of space via microSD card (they cost around 32 bucks on average at time of writing this). Depending on what your plans are with this phone I would advise buying some extra space (at least 32GB more for pics and vids).

The real selling point of this particular model though is the batter life. So how does 5,000 mAH hold up? Amazing! I am a bit of a app gamer and I can easily burn through my iphone battery in several hours of gaming non stop (depending on game sometimes less). I tried the same kind of games that typically burn my iphone battery down quick and I am loving how long Blue Studio Energy holds up. I now have not charged this phone for 2 days and I been using it non stop. It still has battery to spare! This battery is awesome.

One point I read a lot of negative reviews about are the 1.3GHZ quad core. There are certainly moments in the UI where you get a momentary blip of lag (usually the stretchy/shrinky bounce menus cause it). Outside of that, I find my android UI quick and snappy even with live backgrounds. The real test for me are apps. I started throwing big apps at this phone, one that I know have heavy 3D graphics (apps using unreal and unity engine). Overall, I am impressed with the cpu. It does its job and considering the price of this phone I think it's quite good. It certainly is not compatible to a top end samsung or apple phone, but consider the price of this phone. To be honest it's not that far off on performance and my experience overall I could easily find this phone acceptable for my main daily use.

Another point that is extremely worth mentioning is how generous they are with accessories in the box. They include a clear rubbery case so you do not have to buy an aftermarket one. They also include a screen protector so you do no have to buy an after market one. I think Apple could take a note from the BLU team when it comes to adding extra value in for the price. The headphones they include come with a neck mic. It also comes with charger, usb cable and a converter usb cable to allow you to charge up other usb devices directly off of this phone's battery (I could easily see me charging up my iphone from the BLU which makes me laugh a bit).

Overall, I am pleasantly stunned with how amazing this phone is. I never used a BLU before getting this phone. Now that I had a chance to break it in I am a fan. The fact that you can get this much quality in a new unlocked phone is shocking. It makes me realize just how much other big brands are overpricing their products (considering those phones costs 700-900+ unlocked) This BLU is 4-5 times cheaper and stacks up nearly as well. If you are looking for a spare emergency phone, an extra line for a family member or just trying to find a solid smart phone without spending too much you just found it! Be sure to consider this phone strongly if you're in the market.