It was back in 2014 when Samsung released their first curved edge smartphone known as Samsung Note Edge. Since then many brands have jumped on the bandwagon and released their iteration of curved display smartphones. It’s been 3 years later, and we are still seeing brands coming out with curved edge smartphones, and one of them is the Bluboo Edge.

Edge was launched in the market back in January (as far as I remember) 2017. As the name suggests, it features a curved edge display just like what you see on the Samsung’s edge variants. But one thing about the curved edge smartphone is that they aren’t cheap. And this is where the Bluboo Edge shines!

The Bluboo Edge features 2GB of RAM, 16GB of ROM, is equipped with a quad core 1.3GHz MTK6737 CPU and 8MP rear and 5MP front camera, and you can get all this for only as little as $130! And surprisingly enough, the design looks almost identical to Samsung’s S7 Edge. So let’s dive right into the unboxing and let’s see what this smartphone has to offer.

Bluboo Edge Unboxing:

So we get the phone in a black rectangular box. On top, you can see the brand logo and their slogan “BEYOND YOURLIFE!”.

At the back, we have the specification mentioned of the phone, and of course, the sample sticker since we received it directly from Bluboo for review.

Once you take off the top, you can see the smartphone; it’s covered in plastic bag.

Below the phone, there was a hidden compartment, removing which unveils the other accessories we get with the phone.

So we get 1x charging cable, 1x charging adapter, 1x SIM needle, 1x instruction manual, 2x warranty card (same card) and 1x extra screen protector.

Closer Look:

So this is how the phone looks like out of the box. It has a protective sticker over the pre-installed screen protector. The sticker also has pointers (not visible in this picture) pointing out the buttons and ports. As for the front goes, we have a home button/fingerprint sensor at the bottom place like almost every other smartphone. On top, we have the call speaker and LED status indicator and the front camera. And yes, the edges are curved.

 

This is how the back looks out of the box. The phone does come with a protective case if you haven’t noticed that. And the back also has a sticker on it identifying the IMEI and other stuff.

This is how the phone looks with the case and sticker from the back. Pure gold and curved on edges even on the back. The Camera along with the flash is present at its standard position while the brand’s logo can be found near the bottom.

Here’s a closeup shot of the Camera near the top.

Here’s a look at the phone from the front without the sticker. The curves aren’t very clear in this picture, but the edges on both sides are curved.

At the bottom of the phone, we have the 3.5mm audio port, the microUSB port for charging and data transfer and the speaker of the phone.

On the right side of the phone is where you have the power button.

While on the left side, you have the volume rockers.

And on top is where the SIM goes. On Bluboo Edge, you can either use 2x Nano SIM cards or 1x Nano and 1x MicroSD card. And the phone does support 4G Network.

Specification:

General

Width: 72mm
Depth: 8.6mm
Height: 151mm
Weight: 203g
Battery: 2600mAh, 4.35V
Systerm: Android 6.0
SIM: Dual SIM, Dual Standby
Read Camera: Sony IMX219 8.0MP AF （Interpolated 13.0MP AF)
Front Camera: 5.0MP FF （Interpolated 8.0MP FF)
WLAN: 802.11a/b/g/n
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0
Video: MP4、3GP、MOV、MKV、AVI、FLV、MPEG
Audio: FLAC、APE、AAC、MKA、OGG、MIDI、M4A、AMR
Image: JPEG、PNG、GIF、BMP
Positioning: WIFI、GPS

Display:

Dimensions: 5.5″ HD AUO OGS
Resolution: 1280*720 pixels
TP: Double-layer, OGS Technology
TP Function: Glove Mode, Wet-Hand Operation, Off-screen Wakeup

Processor and RAM+ROM:

CPU: MediaTek MT6737 quad-core 1.3 GHz Processor
RAM+ROM: 2GB + 16GB
GPU: ARM Mali-T720 MP1 650MHz

Network Type:

GSM: B5(850)/B8(900)/B3(1800)/B2(1900)
WCDMA: B5(850)/B1(2100)
FDD-LTE: B1(2100)/B3(1800)/B7(2600)/B20(800)

Sensors:

Gravity Sensor
Proximity sensor
Light-sensor
Acceleration Sensor
Heart Rate Sensor

Display:

The Bluboo Edge is a 5.5″ smartphone featuring a 720p OGS technology display. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4 which means it’s not getting scratched easily and you can use the phone while wearing gloves or with wet hands. The colors saturation and the brightness of the screen is good. The touch sensitivity is a lot better than a few phones I’ve used in the past, and it also supports 5 points multi-touch. Though sometimes you have to click on the application icon 2-3 times to execute it. Not sure if that’s the display issue or the software, though I’ve faced the same issue with a few other smartphone so it might as well be my finger.

As for the edges, they don’t have any special features like volume control or navigation, etc. The edges of the screen are pretty much there for aesthetic purpose only, but yeah, you can use the screen all the way upto the end of the edges.

I have to say that the double sided curved edges (even the back body has curved edges if you haven’t noticed) make the phone very comfortable while holding it. And the grip feels just about perfect. Only if the screen was a little smaller, we might be looking at the perfect body to display design.

Performance:

The Bluboo Edge features 2GB of RAM and a quad core 1.3Ghz MTK6763 CPU. That is good enough for your everyday task and casual gaming and multi-tasking. I noticed very little lag during my sessions of browsing internet or multi-tasking between messages and other application. In short, the performance I experienced on the device is bearable or rather justifiable and acceptable. The only thing I didn’t like about the Bluboo Edge so far is that it gets hot pretty quick during gaming sessions or Data connection. And hot to the extent that you may want to leave it a while for cooling down. And once it starts getting hot, the smartphone also starts getting slow. Other than that, for the basic needs like texting, calling and watching videos or browsing the internet, the phone performs well.

As for the benchmarks goes, the Bluboo Edge scored 541 points in single-core and 1440 points in multi-core benchmark in Geekbench.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It scored 29875 points in the Antutu Benchmark, while 101 points in the 3Dmark Sling Shot Extreme benchmark. The results are pretty good for the specifications of the phone.

Camera:

The Bluboo Edge features an 8MP (interpolated 13MP) rear camera while a 5MP (interpolated 8MP) front camera. The Camera quality of Bluboo Edge seems pretty fair to me in the daylight shooting. Though as expected from a budget phone, the quality isn’t very great when it comes to the night light.

 

You can check the raw images at the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/z51u4d76601wyqi/AADgcTphpMm1O-H-I5Hox5F8a?dl=0

Call and Audio Quality:

The Audio quality is pretty good; the volume is loud enough that you won’t need to take it to the max to hear the songs or videos. The vocals are pretty clear though when at loud volume the speaker starts distorting a bit. And for some reason, it sounds a little mushy to me, though nothing too weird, you should be able to get by with the speaker.

The Audio quality is pretty good as well and loud enough to hear clearly. Though there are some background noises also being captured with the phone as expected.

Battery:

Bluboo Edge doesn’t offer the very best of battery timing as it’s equipped with only a 2600mAh battery. The phone takes about 3 hours to charge completely from 0-100 and is only able to get you 7-8 hours of average usage and around 3:30-4 hours of on-screen time. On standby, it can surely last longer. Most of the battery is lost when the phone is in idle condition where it keeps trying to grab onto the network when the signal isn’t that strong. Setting the network to either Edge, 3G or LTE will help improve this issue. But still, that 2600mAh battery isn’t good enough for a 5.5″ 720p display and will hardly get you by half the day without charging the phone once.

Operating System:

The Bluboo Edge comes with Android 6.0 Marshmellow installed out of the box. The user experience is not all that different from other sets coming out of Chinese brands. Though the Bluboo Edge is using a custom launcher called Pheonix with custom icons that somewhat fits the gold color of the phone. All the applications are spread across multiple screens, and the app drawer is missing from the launcher. So, you might want to install a custom launcher if you need the app drawer.

The quick access drop-down menu is also pretty simple with all the stuff you need handy present there like WiFi, Audio profile, flashlight, etc. Though what’s different in this OS than a stock Android 6.0 Marshmellow is that the OS features a Turbo download option as well which lets you download files larger than 20MB with WiFi and 3G/4G network at the same time for faster speed. This is not something we see on many devices right now.
As for navigation and the layout of the operating system, it’s pretty smooth and well managed.

WiFi:

The WiFi quality of Bluboo Edge is really good. The connectivity coverage area of the phone is great, and I don’t remember having any buggy disconnections during my usage of the phone. Below is a comparison of the Bluboo Edge with AllCall Bro and Wired PC connection.

Conclusion:

So 3 years after the launch of first curved edge display smartphone, we’re in 2017 with a budget phone that promises you good performance, great design and curved display, and all for only a price point of $130.

The phone performed really good in everyday tasks and multi-tasking between various applications. There were some performance issues during multi-tasking which depends on the kind of application and how many applications you’re running in the background, though for basic use, the phone performed great. But yeah, the phone does have its cons as well. One of which is the heat issue. The phone gets hot pretty quickly once you’re playing a game or have your Data Connection on, after which the phone also gets slow, and you need to give it a moment to cool down.

As far as camera quality goes, you can get some good photos with the rear and front camera of the phone in daylight, and average quality pics in the night time.

The operating system feels good, though the other con I found about the phone was the battery timing. The phone is just not able to take you through the day by any means.

So in short, if you’re on a budget, and have always wanted to feel the curved edge phones everyone has been talking about, without giving up much on the hardware, then the Bluboo Edge seems like a good choice for you as it costs only about $130 on our partnered store Gearbest. But right now there’s  sale going on over at Aliexpress where you can score the phone for as low as $110. So in the end, I would like to rate the Bluboo Edge a 4 out of 5 stars and give it our 4 stars Best Value Award.