Blackview has one device that looks pretty nice on paper. We are talking about the R7 phone. It has some great specs and it costs below $190. Learn more in our full review.

Blackview R7 Review: VIDEO REVIEW

Blackview R7 Review: UNBOXING

The phone ships with all the usual stuff and some extras include USB OTG cable, a screen protector, a pair of earphones and a soft TPU case.

Blackview R7 Review: SPECS

Blackview R7 Review: DESIGN and DISPLAY

When it comes to the design, the Blackview R7 is pretty comfortable to hold in the hand.

It uses metal chassis that does around the device. It’s hard to tell if the metal was used in the backplate but it has a primer coating (similar to the LG G5), which feels like plastic to me.

As far as camera, we have a 13MP Omnivision sensor coupled with a single LED flash. The fingerprint scanner is not the fastest I’ve seen but it unlocks your phone from the standby mode and it is pretty accurate.

The buttons, which sit on the right side, are made of metal too, they are tactile but the problem is that they rattle quite a bit(Maybe just because this is an engineering sample, the factory promise better quality on the first batch).

Same can be said about the hybrid dual SIM card slot.

We have a 5.5” 1080p display, which is covered with the Gorilla Glass 3. It is pretty sharp and vivid but I wish it had a higher brightness output for a better sunlight legibility. A front-facing camera has 8MP.

One of the disappointments of this device is that there is no notification LED light and the capacitive buttons are not backlit. It is strange that Blackview did not implement these features considering the price of the phone.

The loudspeaker quality is just mediocre as I would love to hear more depth and balance.

Blackview R7 Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

One of the main selling points of this device is its powerful internals. The Blackview R7 ships with an octa-core MTK6755 Helio P10 chip, which has the max. clock speeds of 2.0GHz, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, which can be further expanded via the microSD card slot.

These kind of specs sound impressive but in real life, the phone struggles handling some 3D games like Asphalt 8 on the highest graphics. On the other hand, changing the graphics to medium solves this issue and the phone handles the game with just a few skipped frames.

I’ve tested the phone with some other games like Nova 3 and the device handles it pretty well.

The phone gets a little warm but it does not alter the gaming performance.

Blackview R7 Review: BENCHMARKS

Blackview R7 Review: USER INTERFACE

The phone ships with the Android 6.0 but it has Blackview’s skin on top of it, which removes the app tray for some reason. Also, we have some redesigned icons and some other design touches.

There are a few features like gesture and motion controls that work pretty well but the phone could recognize gesture input faster.

So far I didn’t have any hiccups or lag and the phone performs well on the daily basis.

Blackview R7 Review: IMAGE QUALITY

The daylight image quality is pretty good for the category of the phone and the photos look quite sharp. A few shortcomings would be that the camera struggles adjusting the dynamic range in some of the shots. Also, the colors look too warm and some of the shots seem to have a slightly yellowish tint.  In addition, there were a few close-up images that were not as sharp as I expected but other macro shots look great.

The low-light camera performance is not the worst I’ve seen but it has the shortcomings that are common to most of the phones in this price range – a low amount of detail and high level of noise. A worse thing is that there is a visible red tint if you take pictures close to the light source e.g. street light.

The video quality would be pretty good but there is a noticeable choppiness when panning the phone. See a video review for a video sample.

A selfie camera is pretty good and it will do the trick for social media if you take pictures in good lighting.

Blackview R7 Review: CONNECTIVITY

I didn’t have any connectivity issues. Even the GPS lock speeds were fast and the GPS was accurate.

Blackview R7 Review: BATTERY LIFE

The phone ships with the 3000mAh battery that performs pretty well for its capacity. You should expect just over 4 hours of screen-on time but the results may vary, depending on the usage.

When you need to recharge your battery, the phone supports quick charge tech. I was able to fully charge the phone in just over 1 hour and 20 mins. Keep in mind that the screen-on time was measured before connecting a phone to a charger (the phone simply died before I managed to take a screenshot). 

Blackview R7 Review: CONCLUSIONS

The Blackview R7 aims to bring some great specs at the price of less than $190.

Well, it delivers in some ways. The phone is well-built and it sports a sharp display and the UI performs well. Also, the Blackview R7’s camera can take some good looking daylight images for the price, the phone has a decent battery life and a pretty accurate fingerprint scanner.

However, Helio P10 processor may sound impressive on paper but it can only handle games like Asphalt 8 on medium graphics. On the other hand, I’ve tested the phone mainly with the most demanding 3D games.

Other shortcomings would be that buttons and the SIM card tray rattle quite a bit and the phone does not have neither notification LED nor backlit capacitive buttons.

At the end of the day, the Blackview R7 still brings quite of lot of value to the table for the price. The phone definitely has more pros than cons but make sure to consider if the previously mentioned shortcomings are important to you or not(This unit is an engineering sample, the factory promise better quality for the first batch).

The post Blackview R7 Review appeared first on Gizmochina.

Blackview has been busy lately, focusing on its low-end and mid-range devices like the Blackview Ultra Plus and the Blackview A8. However, the company does not want to limit itself to the low-end market, which is why Blackview is developing a relatively powerful flagship for the year 2016. The upcoming device, called the Blackview R7 was already revealed in a couple of pictures late December last year, but now, the company confirms a few more details about the device.

The most important news today is the pricing of the Blackview R7. The company has confirmed that the phone will be available for purchase at just $159.99 via online retailers. The phone will be officially launched soon and the sales will start sometime in May 2016.

Now you must be thinking that $159.99 is a pretty high figure for a Blackview smartphone. But it does have good specs to justify the price. The phone is powered by the Helio P10 MT6755 octa-core chip that is used by a number of mid-range flagships in the market, including the OPPO R9. Further, there will be a 5.5-inch 1080p FHD display with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 and 2.5D arc screen. The phone is said to feature a borderless screen design.

As for the memory, the Blackview R7 will come with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage further expandable up to 128GB via MicroSD. At the back, there will be a 13MP camera sensor, while up front, you get an 8MP sensor. The fingerprint sensor will also be located at the back. The body will be made out of metal to give it a premium look. Finally, the phone will come with the Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS on top. And yes, there will be a 3500mAh battery on board.

As you can see, these are pretty good specs for a $159.99 smartphone. Even the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro or the Meizu M3 Note which retails at the same price don’t offer this much value for the money.

Now, all we have to do is wait for the official release of the device which will be in May.

In case you are looking for something cheaper, you can check out the 5-inch Blackview A8 budget phone from here.

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In the past one year, we have seen some great smartphones from the manufacturer, Blackview. Now, the company has revealed its plans for 2016 and one of the first flagship devices of next year will be the Blackview R7. This is an important product for the company and hence, the company has made sure that the phone comes with pretty good specifications to justify its “2016 flagship” name tag.

The Blackview R7 comes with the powerful yet efficient Helio P10 MT6755 chipset. The P series Helio chips focus on performance and efficiency. So, the Helio P10 is expected to be mid-range flagship chip with eight Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2GHz. This will ensure pretty good performance without sacrificing on battery life.

There will reportedly be 4GB of RAM on board the device, which is at par with what most flagships offer. As for storage, you will get 32GB internal with an option to upgrade it via MicroSD up to 128GB. The display will be of standard flagship size, measuring 5.5-inches with FHD 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. On top, you will have 2.5D curved glass.

Given the flagship status, the Blackview R7 comes with the Samsung 3M2 13MP sensor at the back with fast focus times of up to 0.3 seconds. Up front, there will be the OV5648 5MP sensor which will enable users to take good selfies. The phone reportedly comes with improved camera tech such as a perfect SWDR (smart wide dynamic range), great SNR (signal to noise ratio) which will help the user take better low light images as well.

The phone supports 4G LTE networks, but we are not yet sure whether it’s a dual SIM dual standby phone. As for software, the Blackview R7 will feature the latest version of Android on board, the Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The R7 is said to have Hi-Fi sound effect, but it’s yet to be confirmed whether they have incorporated a Hi-Fi chip. You get a powerful 360-degree fingerprint sensor on the back as well.

To power all these specs, the company has added a large 3500mAh battery inside, which will make sure that the phone runs for at least a day. Moreover, it supports fast charging at 9V 2.5A which means 5 minutes of charging will give you around 90 minutes of talk time.

Even the looks of the phone are impressive, with a metal frame that goes through 169 processes including 8 CNC machining, micron-sized sand blasting and anti-fingerprint coating. We can see that the phone will be available in at least one color, i.e. Gold.

Overall, the Blackview R7 looks like a great smartphone. We would really like to see the company price the device aggressively. But for now, we have no details on the pricing. We will keep you guys updated with more information in the coming days.

Meanwhile, let us know whether you like the upcoming flagship from Blackview.

Here is the the Blackview BV2000s

The post Blackview R7 2016 Flagship Will Feature Helio P10 Chip, 4GB RAM & A Large Battery appeared first on Gizmochina.