Blu Vivo XL : First Impressions and Quick Comparison with Vivo 5

The Florida based mobile manufacturing Company, Blu Products which is known for delivering quality mobile phones, announced their couple of variants at ongoing CES 2016 – Blu Vivo (you can check first impressions) and Blu Vivo XL. If you observe the name XL signifies improvised version of some variant like display size or processor etc. Vivo XL seems like a compact version of Vivo 5, even though it isn’t Vivo 5 XL with larger body. It is Lesser in specs and hence lesser in price as well.

The design of Blu Vivo XL looks identical to Vivo 5, even though Vivo XL seem to have a white texture design back. With Curved shiny display with metal body and premium finish, XL looks stunning as Vivo 5. Same like Vivo 5, Blu Vivo XL also has a 5.5 inch 720 p HD Super AMOLED display at 267 pixel density with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Protection. But the difference is, I don’t know if its evident to only god colored version, the screen seems to be fit into a black chassis. Unlike Vivo 5, the side bezels and screen looks separate in Vivo XL. This black outside is also there in top and bottom bezels. You can see clearly this in pictures. Anyway, coming to dimensions, Blu Vivo XL measures to be 155.2 x 82.2 x 7.5 mm. Clearly Vivo XL is of more length, breadth and thicker than Vivo 5. Even though the display size is same, Vivo XL appears to have a bigger body to justify the XL title. This device weighs 152 grams in hand, which is heavier than Vivo 5. Vivo XL is available in 4 color options – Solid Gold, Chrome Silver, Midnight Blue and Liquid Pink while Vivo 5 has only two variants – Chic Gold and Liquid Silver.

Under the hood, Blue Vivo XL features a 64-bit Octa-Core 64-bit MediaTek 6753 SoC coupled with Mali-T720 GPU, identical to what we’ve seen in Vivo 5. The difference between the two comes with RAM and storage; While Vivo 5 has 3 GB RAM and 32 GB expandable storage, Vivo XL has 2 GB RAM and 16 GB onboard flash storage which can be expandable up to 64 GB using MicroSD card. This device runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, same as Vivo 5. If you are an average user, you would’t able to notice difference between a 2GB RAM and 3 GB RAM often, but there would be definitely a difference in processing power between the two. Even though many people are wishing phones with 16 GB storage should die, but Blu decided to keep that much in Vivo XL. That said, you can play high end games, watch HD videos in this device too. It would handle high end processing very well and you wouldn’t experience any hitch. If you ever run out of storage in this device, you can use a SD Card to fill her up. Even though it runs Android 5.1 lollipop out of the box, you can expect OTA soon.

Coming to Camera section, Blu Vivo XL has a 13 MP (Phase Detect Auto Focus, LED flash) sensor on the back, and 5 MP sensor on the front. Again, thse specs are similar to what we have seen in Vivo 5 earlier. So, So, you can expect nice performance from this camera as well. You will get shots with appropriate saturation and LED flash would be there to help you on low light conditions. With wide angle lens on the front side,you can click nice selfie shots with your near and dear ones with ease. You can shoot 1080p HD video at 30 frames per second using this device too.

Blu Vivo XL has 3150 mAh battery inside, same as Vivo 5. Even though the RAM and storage are less compared to Vivo 5, the display and processing power are similar. So you can expect similar, if not, with a little difference back up on Vivo XL with Vivo 5. For average users, this device would last for a day without any issue. Coming to connectivity, Vivo XL is 4G (2/4/7/12/17 bands) enabled device and supports more bands when compared to vivo 5 which only supports 2/4/7 bands. Coming to 3G, Blu Vivo XL supports only 850/1700/1900 bands when compared to Vivo 5 which additionally supports band 2100. Other connectivity options such as Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, USB Type-C and FM Radio are same as Vivo 5. Blu Vivo XL is a dual SIM device, so as Vivo 5.

Blu announced Vivo XL at $149 in US Market which is approx equal to ₹10k. Now we’ve come to interesting part of the conversation, should you buy this device? Well, it depends on what you need but you can think of it from two perspectives –

If you compare it with Vivo 5- Then you would find XL to be bigger body but same display, lesser storage but same processing power, same camera same battery and lesser in price
If you are looking at it as it is – Average display, great processing power, nice camera, nice battery and features

Depending on these considerations, you can decide whether to consider it or not.

Spec Sheet of Blu Vivo XL