BLU Products unveiled the Life series of smartphones back in mid-March. That series includes the Life One, Life View and Life Play and it looks like one of those three handsets has come available for sale in the US market. The model is theL Life Play and the handset is selling unlocked for $229.
At the moment the BLU Life Play can be found with Amazon. The handset is available in a variety of colors to include blue and grey as well as pink, white and yellow. The blue and grey models look to be shipping in 2 to 3 weeks while the remaining colors show a 2 to 4 week shipping estimate.
Aside from a bit of a wait, the Life Play smartphone is running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and sporting features to include a 4.7-inch IPS display at 1280 x 720, quad-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, a microSD card slot, 2 megapixel front-facing camera and an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash and HD video recording at 1080p.
Other goodies include dual-SIM support, a thickness of 7.9mm and HSPA+ data connectivity with speeds of up to 42Mbps. Aside from having to wait a few weeks for delivery, the Life Play may be a handset to consider if you are looking for something with a decent mix of specs and price.
Otherwise, it was also said the BLU Products Life View handset will be coming available in July. We have yet to see a specific date for the Life View, however we do know that it will be priced at $299 with specs to include a 5.7-inch HD display, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and a 12 megapixel rear-facing camera.
SOURCE: Facebook
The release of the low spec Life Play, which has only 4GB of ROM, combined with the company’s reticence to discuss a release date for and comments implying build quality issues with the rest of the announced Life lineup in discussions with interested consumers on Blu’s Facebook page doesn’t bode well. It’s starting to look like the rest of the lineup may turn out to be vaporware. I appreciate Blu’s desire to adhere to adequate build quality standards but hyping a product too early and delaying release dates while still hyping them just generates consumer frustration and ill-will. I do need to update my phone this summer but am now not certain the Life View will still be reliable after the 3-month delay in it’s release. I’m not certain if there are a multitude of hardware and performance issues or just a few, but Blu’s crytic references to product problems being the reason for the delayed release has me leery. I do hope they can thrive and bring decent, reasonably-priced phones to the Americas. I also hope the problems with the Life lineup gets them to stop announcing product release dates that aren’t realistic.
it’s unfortunate this company is so incredibly flaky.
what do you mean by that?
Will Android Central be doing a review of the Life Play or any other phone in the series. Blu is a generally new player in the US market, and although their price is outstanding, I wouldn’t want to risk buying the phone if quality was not evident. Could you help us out, Android Central?
correction: its 4.7″ HD not 5.7″ HD display…