Blackview BL9000 Pro: New rugged smartphone with thermal imaging camera, 5G and very fast charging

Blackview is offering new smartphones in quick succession with a particular focus on rugged systems. The BL9000 Pro is one such example and is likely to be only available for direct import from May 6 at a price of just under $530.

As is often the case with rugged devices, the smartphone is equipped with additional functions. On the BL9000 Pro, this is a thermal imaging camera. This comes from FLIR and has a resolution of 160 x 120, making it possible to recognize wild animals based on their thermal signature. FLIR Lepton 3.5 optics are installed, and the Isocell GN5 main camera has a resolution of 50 MP, which is just as high as the front camera.

Blackview installs a MediaTek Dimensity 8020 as the SoC; several of the eight cores of the computing chip can achieve a clock frequency of up to 2.6 GHz. The RAM measures 12 GB and the UFS 3.1 is also generously sized at 512 GB. The 17 mm and 412 gram smartphone is said to be MIL-STD-810H, IP68 and IP69K certified, meaning it can withstand water, dust and other physical stresses.

Two speakers with Harman AudioEFX are installed, which should result in solid playback quality. The 6.78-inch screen with a resolution of 1080 x 2460 pixels is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus and offers a refresh rate of 120 Hz.

The GNSS module supports GPS, Beidou, Glonass and Galileo, and the two SIM card slots can also be used on 5G networks. Although the 8800 mAh battery is not as large as on other rugged smartphones, it can be charged with a whopping 120 watts and therefore extremely quickly. Lastly, the BL9000 Pro utilizes the DokeOS 4.0 operating system based on Android 14.