Review: Blu Pure View
Lock Screen
The Pure View has a simple lock screen experience; there is nothing like an active/ambient display feature. Notifications will cause the notification LED to blink, but that's it.
Press the lock screen button to wake the display and view the time and notifications. The clock/date widget is huge, which makes it easier to see. Notifications pile up in the center of the screen. Shortcuts to voice search and the camera are in the bottom corners. You cannot change these shortcuts.
I found the fingerprint reader somewhat annoying to train. It often errored out, suggesting that the reader was dirty and needed to be cleaned. Once set, the reader is the quickest, most convenient way to unlock the phone.
The Pure View also supports PIN, pattern, and password options, as well as the Smart Lock tools, such as on-body detection, trusted places/devices, and "trusted face".
Since Blu advertises the Pure View as supporting face unlock, I tested the trusted face feature. Setting your face is easy and it works fairly consistently. Blu warns that it is not as secure as a password or PIN, as photos and look-alikes can fool it.
Home Screens
Blu ships the Pure View with Android 7.1 Nougat, which is grating given how long Android 8 has been around. At least the experience is mostly standard Android as designed by Google.
The home screen panels behave like the majority of Android devices. Two panels, plus Google Now, are active upon first boot. Feel free to customize your home screens with wallpapers, apps, and widgets. You can adjust the font and icon sizes, which lets you fit more on the screen if you wish.
The app drawer, settings menu and Quick Settings / notification shade deliver a standard Android experience. If you've used any Android phone in the last year or two, you'll feel right at home on the Pure View.
Blu opted for a MediaTek 6753 processor with eight cores clocked at 1.3 GHz. This processor is a mid-range chip that was first released in 2015, meaning it doesn't include the latest advancements in chip design. It's paired with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. I found the phone ran mostly well. The majority of apps were quick to open, and screen transitions were smooth. The processor didn't have enough gusto, however, to keep the Play Store and camera app running their best.
Camera
The camera app on the Pure View is completely different from the one Blu puts on its Vivo series, and that's a really good thing. This camera app is less chaotic visually and easier to use as a result.
The quickest way to open the camera is to double press the lock key. It also opens via the lock screen shortcut. The app takes just over 1 second to open.
The viewfinder layout is fairly typical. Buttons on the left let you access the various shooting modes, cycle through the flash settings, and switch to the selfie camera. On the right, you have separate video and picture capture buttons. Swipe to the left to access the camera settings.
Shooting modes include auto, QR code, beauty, night, HDR, and panorama. These all worked about as I expected them too. The QR code mode rarely matched the scanned code to a usable search result, and the nighttime mode is best used with a tripod. I wish the HDR mode was faster and less of a hassle to turn on.
The full settings menu offers more options and control than most. Importantly, this is where you'll find the Pure View's different scene shooting modes. You can manually set the camera for sports, the beach, sunsets, snow, shade, and so on. This helps the phone balance light and color with the surroundings. You can also turn on auto scene detection and the phone will choose scenes for you automatically. This is helpful if you need to capture something in a hurry and can't take the time to futz with the controls. It's fairly accurate.
The Pure View lets you shoot in RAW format if you want, supports burst shooting, and lets you tweak exposure, white balance, sharpness, contrast, and more.
I wish the app were faster. It's really, really slow to focus, particularly when shooting in low light. The HDR mode is far slower than on most other phones, as is panorama mode. The lack of speed is a buzzkill, for sure.
Photos/Video
The Pure View has one camera on back and two on the front. Yes, two selfie cameras!
The main shooter on the rear has a 13-megapixel Sony sensor with a lens at f/2.2. It produces average results that are usable for sharing on social media. It did a fine job with focus and color, but struggled with exposure on occasion. I'm pleased with the lush greens in a lot of the shots below, but you can see how it blew out the white wall behind my shrub. Low light led to noticeable grain in some images.
The two selfie cameras are both 8 megapixels, but offer different shooting angles: standard 71-degree, and a wider 120-degree angle. You can see the difference in the two selfies below. As with the main camera, the selfie camera produces good color and fine focus, but uneven exposure. For example, see the shadow over my shoulder, which is so underexposed it makes the image look vignetted.
Both the front and rear cameras include a beauty effect tool. With it, you can smooth out wrinkles and minimize spots and other skin imperfections. It is easy to go overboard and come across looking quite freaky.
As for video, the Pure View captures the standard 1080p full HD at 30 frames per second. The results are in line with other phones at this price point, which is to say decent.
Bloatware
Blu has a bad bloatware problem. The Pure View is crammed with crappy apps from Blu that are predatory and annoying. Blu Rewards is the biggest offender. This app, which is hidden from the app drawer, delivers a siege of unwanted alerts, messages, full-on audio commercials, and more. I was only able to stop the madness by finding it deep in the settings and disabling it. Blu Rewards cannot be removed entirely. Other junk apps include BlockSite, Blu Help, Safe Connect, SmartNews, and Wish. None of these are necessary and I recommend you hide, uninstall, or stash them away.
In light of these apps' behavior, I'll remind you that Blu settled with the FTC earlier this year for surreptitiously collecting user data and allowing it to be sent to servers in China. The company swears it no longer does this, but I'm not encouraged when I see apps that border on malware preinstalled by the manufacturer!
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BLU Pure View
