[sc:mobile-category ]I was in a Microsoft store recently and was looking at the Blu Win HD, a phone that at $179 unlocked had caught my interest more for the price point than anything else.
I decided to pick one up to use as a secondary phone for a couple of reasons:
- Dual SIM (this is kind of neat, though I don’t have a real use for it)
- Micro SD Card slot
- Support 1700 band, which Wind Mobile runs on
- 5″ display
When I first pulled it out of the box my first impression was about how light it felt. That turns out to be because the battery is removable and no installed 🙂
However even with the battery installed it’s a very light and thin phone. Blu has been making android phones for a while and at first I thought the Win HD would be like the HTC M8, a simple software load of Windows Phone, which it is and isn’t.
They’ve gone with physical (though capacitive) buttons on the front of the phone, but no camera button. The volume and power buttons are on opposite sides near the top of the phone which isn’t the best layout as several times now when powering down the phone I’ve watched the volume go up or down as I squeeze the volume rocker at the same time, which also takes a screen shot as well 🙂
The screen looks nice, though the capacitive screen feels a little “funny”, not bad but just not as responsive as my Nokia 925.
The camera is an 8MP shooter and seems serviceable, nothing great but it works.
Performance wise, it’s responsive, but does feel a slower than my Nokia, but if I didn’t have the 925 to compare against I doubt I’d notice it. However if you really want to see it grind to a crawl, turn on the Internet sharing. When active the phone is virtually unusable, missing touches and swipes all the time. Clearly the CPU has enough power to run Windows Phone, but not much else.
It comes with everything you might need, screen protector, silicon case, charger, etc.
Overall I’m impressed with it and for $179 outright it’s a deal.
