Review: BLU Studio C 5.0-Inch Android Smartphone

• June 27, 2015
• James Skemp
• review

Very decent entry-level phone

First off, as I appear to be unable to use my existing SIM card from my provider with this phone I was unable to use it to make standard calls. However, I did use it for playing music, browsing the web, and Google Hangouts.

That said, I was pretty impressed with the BLU Studio C immediately after opening the package as it included both a screen protector as well as clear back case cover. Normally these two items would set you back $20 to $30, so it was completely unexpected and welcome.

Unfortunately I did run into issues getting the screen protector on the phone itself (crooked the first time and then specs had gotten onto the sticky side when trying to put it on straight. It also feels very slippery compared to what I've used in the past (Tech Armor on my Galaxy S4, and I forget what on my tablets). Honestly, with the specs under the protector and the smoothness, if I had the option to remove the protector I think I would. But your mileage my vary.

The back case is pretty nice. It snapped on easily, but is such that it won't accidentally slip off. It has a little bit of a texture to it, so it's not too slippery. It's clearly built for the phone as the case has all the right holes in all the right places.

Next we have the hardware itself, which is actually on the heavier side. This might be due to the battery, or the materials it's made of. It's also slightly larger than a Galaxy S4, although the actual screen size is the same. The buttons for the Android OS are software buttons, so the extra size is not to account for that. But the heft isn't bad. But combined, as a guy that puts his phone in his pocket, I certainly know when I have it on me.

Speaker quality sounds fine to me, although I wouldn't consider myself an audiophile, and I kept it at a reasonable volume. Streaming music to a Bluetooth device was just fine.

In regards to the battery, again, since I wasn't able to use this as a phone your mileage my vary, but I had excellent time per charge with this. With it checking for email and playing music and some videos I was able to get far per charge. But even with my standard phone I'm able to get pretty far with my devices, so ...

One quasi-major knock is that this can't connect to 5GHz wifi channels. It's odd for something like this to not have that capability at this point in time. But I suppose you get what you pay for.

On the plus side, it does support up to 64 GB of expandable storage, making it easy to throw audio and video files onto a MicroSD card, or take photos and video with the nice camera.

Now comes the tricky bit, which is Android. This ships with Android 5.x, which is the current version of the Android software. Androids runs extremely well on the device, with no real hiccups. Well, outside of some odd issues with responsiveness. Initially this was focused on the back button, which I'd have to press a number of times for it to respond. This wasn't an issue with the other software buttons like home or 'apps'/windows (third button). There is a tiny bit of something in the far upper right of the button which might be causing issues with this. I'll probably have to pull the protector off to verify, but pressing to the far left of the button doesn't work so I don't think that's completely it.

Otherwise it definitely has Android, and is an extremely clean install. Opera is the only application that was installed that I didn't expect to see, but that's definitely not a big deal.

It's also Windows and developer friendly. I was able to connect the phone via a USB cable to my computer and connect almost immediately, as well as enable developer mode and push Android apps to it without issue.

Thus far I haven't received any update notifications for Android, so I can't say how upgrade friendly this is, but being unlocked is a positive.

So overall this is a decent device. Since I can't talk to the phone's capabilities on wireless phone networks I can't give it the full five stars, but I can give the BLU Studio C 5.0-Inch Android Smartphone a very full four of five stars. Even if you were to use it as a cheap Android device / potential backup phone you'd get a good deal with this. The heft might turn away some people, but it feels like it's a quality product.

• review
• android