Bluboo may not be the first manufacturer name you think of when it comes to choosing a smartphone but I came across the Maya model. It costs less than $75, it has an HD display and more. Find out if this cheap phone is any good in the full review.
Bluboo Maya Review: VIDEO
Bluboo Maya Review: UNBOXING
The phone ships with just a charger, USB cable and some paperwork.
Bluboo Maya Review: DESIGN and DISPLAY
The Bluboo Maya is kind of nice phone for such a low price. We have a metal trim that goes around the device along with nice and tactile metal buttons.
The textured back cover gives a little plasticky feel of the device but overall, the phone is well-built. We have a 13MP shooter on the back.
We have a 5.5” 720p display, which is sharp enough for the daily use but it is very reflective outdoors due to pre-installed screen protector. Also, it has a somewhat blueish tint and cold-looking colors. The capacitive buttons are not backlit and I don’t like the position of them. I always prefer the back button to be on the right side.
The LED light is a nice touch for a cheap phone.
You can easily remove a backplate and underneath it you can find 2 SIM card slots, the microSD card slot and a removable 3000mAh battery.
The loudspeakers usually suck on cheap phones and the one found on this phone is no exception.
Bluboo Maya Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
The phone ships with a quad-core Mediatek 6580 chip with the clock speeds of 1.3GHz, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage.
These are pretty low-end specs and the thus the 3D gaming performance is not so impressive. You should expect some stutter even on medium graphics when playing Asphalt 8.
Bluboo Maya Review: BENCHMARKS
Bluboo Maya Review: USER INTERFACE
I always prefer stock Android especially on the cheap phones like this but the Bluboo Maya ships with their own skin on top of Android 6.0.
For some reason, they removed the app tray. A great thing is that there are no bloatware apps and the phone is pretty fast on the daily basis.
Bluboo Maya Review: IMAGE QUALITY
When it comes to image quality, you should never expect something spectacular from any cheap phones.
Surprisingly, the Bluboo Maya can take some decent-looking images. Even the low-light camera performance is slightly better than on some similarly priced phones.
The video quality is just mediocre as on most of the cheap phones.
The selfies produced by the 8MP camera look quite noisy and the level of detail is kind of low.
Bluboo Maya Review: CONNECTIVITY
As for connectivity, everything is working fine except for the GPS. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to get the position lock and GPS is not always accurate.
Bluboo Maya Review: BATTERY LIFE
A 3000mAh battery performs quite well. I could easily get through the day with this phone and that translates to 4.5h of screen-on time on a mixed use. However, the charging speeds with the supplied charger are very slow.
Bluboo Maya Review: CONCLUSIONS
Bluboo Maya aims to brings a lot of value to the table and it succeeds in a lot of ways.
Of course, it is not perfect as the gaming performance is not so great, the GPS is slow and inaccurate, the display is reflective outdoors and the phone is kind of slow to charge.
Still, for just $75 you get a 5.5” phone that runs on Android 6.0, it has a decent day-to-day performance, a good battery life and surprisingly decent camera.
All in all, Bluboo Maya may not be your next flagship phone but it is definitely a decent offering for the price if you are okay with the shortcomings that I just mentioned.
