Blu G90 Smartphone Review – USA Cell Phone with Triple Camera
Comparison devices
Bewertung | Rating Version | Datum | Modell | Gewicht | Laufwerk | Groesse | Aufloesung | Preis ab |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 74.6 % v7 (old) | v7 (old) | 09 / 2020 | Blu G90 Helio A25, PowerVR GE8320 | 185 g | 64 GB eMMC Flash | 6.50" | 1600x720 | |
| 79.7 % v7 (old) | v7 (old) | 09 / 2020 | Samsung Galaxy M21 Exynos 9611, Mali-G72 MP3 | 188 g | 64 GB UFS 2.1 Flash | 6.40" | 2340x1080 | |
| 75.1 % v7 (old) | v7 (old) | 10 / 2020 | Sony Xperia L4 Helio P22 MT6762, PowerVR GE8320 | 178 g | 64 GB eMMC Flash | 6.20" | 1680x720 | |
| 77 % v7 (old) | v7 (old) | 08 / 2020 | Honor 9X Lite Kirin 710, Mali-G51 MP4 | 188 g | 128 GB eMMC Flash | 6.50" | 2340x1080 |
Case, equipment and operation - Fast WLAN
Smartphones for around 200 euros are a dime a dozen. With the Blu G90, a new challenger from the USA has now been added to the list, coinciding with the market entry of Blu Products in Europe. Blu's smartphones are designed in the USA, but are manufactured in China.
The smartphone is available in the four colors magenta, blue, black and white. Our white test device comes with a silver frame and fits well in the hand due to rounded corners. The weight is on the usual level, the backside, which iridesces slightly under the incidence of light, looks high-quality, the Smartphone is processed fairly stable, but gives in some places slightly under pressure.
The phone has been available in the USA for quite some time, and you can see that on the smartphone: Faster memory or higher-resolution screens can be found in some comparable devices. The Blu G90 can still keep up, but you have to be satisfied with older Bluetooth 4.1 and quite few LTE frequencies. The LTE speed is also limited.
With WLAN we achieve quite high transfer rates in the 5 GHz band for a smartphone with WiFi 4. The modem in the MediaTek Helio A25 can theoretically also handle WiFi 5.
Android 10 is on board, but the security patches are a bit older. It remains to be seen how regular Blu Phones updates will be.
On the back of the smartphone there is a physical fingerprint sensor. With a short delay, the smartphone can be unlocked reliably. The general operation works well, but is delayed at high load by the low performance of the SoC.
| Networking | |
| iperf3 transmit AX12 | |
| Blu G90 | |
| Samsung Galaxy M21 | |
| Honor 9X Lite | |
| Sony Xperia L4 | |
| iperf3 receive AX12 | |
| Samsung Galaxy M21 | |
| Blu G90 | |
| Honor 9X Lite | |
| Sony Xperia L4 | |
Cameras - Not so flexible
A modern pixel binning camera, which increases the light sensitivity of the individual pixels, is not yet available in the Blu G90, instead a normal 16 megapixel lens is used. It is supplemented by a wide-angle camera with 8 megapixels and a depth sensor, which is supposed to improve blur effects in portraits.
The main camera generally takes somewhat pale photos, but the details are surprisingly sharp from time to time. In low light, however, the performance of the camera is much weaker. Here, you can still see image content, but in detail the image is very grainy and the brightening is clearly limited. The wide-angle camera is OK for snapshots, but has problems with high contrast.
Videos can be recorded in 1080p and 30 fps at most.
The front camera has a resolution of 13 megapixels and makes good selfies, but you should not enlarge them too much.
Image Comparison
Choose a scene and navigate within the first image. One click changes the position on touchscreens. One click on the zoomed-in image opens the original in a new window. The first image shows the scaled photograph of the test device.
Main Lens FlowerMain Lens EnvironmentMain Lens Low LightUltra Wide Angle
Display - Bright screen in Blu G90
Blu uses a 720p-IPS display. In terms of resolution, there are higher quality screens in this price class, but this is less important in view of the size. It's nice that the average brightness of 498 cd/m² is on a high level and can also be reached manually. However, we noticed that the minimum brightness is quite high, which can be annoying when you look at your smartphone in bed in the evening.
The black level of the smartphone and thus the contrast are at a decent level, but we notice a slight blue cast in our measurements with the spectrophotometer and the CalMAN software. The color deviations from the optimum are on a medium level.
PWM flickering is not observed.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brightness Distribution: 88 %
Center on Battery: 511 cd/m²
Contrast: 1648:1 (Black: 0.31 cd/m²)
ΔE Color 4.76 | 0.5-29.43 Ø4.86
ΔE Greyscale 6.3 | 0.09-98 Ø5.1
97.5% sRGB (Calman 2D)
Gamma: 2.275
| Blu G90 IPS, 1600x720, 6.5" | Samsung Galaxy M21 Super AMOLED, 2340x1080, 6.4" | Sony Xperia L4 IPS, 1680x720, 6.2" | Honor 9X Lite IPS, 2340x1080, 6.5" | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Response Times | 71% | -42% | 19% | |
| Response Time Grey 50% / Grey 80% * | 45 ? | 10 ? 78% | 58 ? -29% | 36 ? 20% |
| Response Time Black / White * | 22 ? | 8 ? 64% | 34 ? -55% | 18 ? 18% |
| PWM Frequency | 215.5 | 100 ? | ||
| Screen | 38% | -8% | -17% | |
| Brightness middle | 511 | 617 21% | 429 -16% | 435 -15% |
| Brightness | 498 | 614 23% | 404 -19% | 422 -15% |
| Brightness Distribution | 88 | 95 8% | 92 5% | 93 6% |
| Black Level * | 0.31 | 0.26 16% | 0.77 -148% | |
| Contrast | 1648 | 1650 0% | 565 -66% | |
| Colorchecker dE 2000 * | 4.76 | 2.11 56% | 6.14 -29% | 3.31 30% |
| Colorchecker dE 2000 max. * | 9.01 | 3.41 62% | 10.51 -17% | 6.8 25% |
| Greyscale dE 2000 * | 6.3 | 2.6 59% | 6.6 -5% | 3.2 49% |
| Gamma | 2.275 97% | 2.073 106% | 2.23 99% | 2.3 96% |
| CCT | 7969 82% | 6921 94% | 8346 78% | 6894 94% |
| Total Average (Program / Settings) | 55% /
46% | -25% /
-15% | 1% /
-10% |
* ... smaller is better
Display Response Times
| ↔ Response Time Black to White | ||
|---|---|---|
| 22 ms ... rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined | ↗ 11 ms rise |  |
| ↘ 11 ms fall | ||
| The screen shows good response rates in our tests, but may be too slow for competitive gamers. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.1 (minimum) to 240 (maximum) ms. » 45 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is similar to the average of all tested devices (20.7 ms). | ||
| ↔ Response Time 50% Grey to 80% Grey | ||
| 45 ms ... rise ↗ and fall ↘ combined | ↗ 22 ms rise |  |
| ↘ 23 ms fall | ||
| The screen shows slow response rates in our tests and will be unsatisfactory for gamers. In comparison, all tested devices range from 0.165 (minimum) to 636 (maximum) ms. » 75 % of all devices are better. This means that the measured response time is worse than the average of all tested devices (32.3 ms). | ||
Screen Flickering / PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation)
| Screen flickering / PWM not detected |  | ||
In comparison: 53 % of all tested devices do not use PWM to dim the display. If PWM was detected, an average of 8437 (minimum: 5 - maximum: 343500) Hz was measured. | |||
Performance, emissions and battery life - More power would be good
The MediaTek Helio A25 is a SoC that is actually used in even cheaper smartphones. So it is not surprising that smartphones like the Galaxy M21 from Samsung offer significantly more performance. If you just move around the Blu G90 menu or perform simple tasks, you will notice the difference less. But as soon as it gets a bit more demanding, there can be a lot of jerking and delays, for example when adjusting the volume or opening the DeepL access menu from Android.
If you want to play on your cell phone, you should rather limit yourself to very simple casual games.
The Blu G90 heats up only slightly and therefore there should be no problems even in warm environments. The loudspeaker sounds very high pitched and brings almost no deep midrange into the sound. At maximum volume, the highs sound unpleasant to the ears and voices seem quite distant. Via 3.5mm connection and Bluetooth the transmission of the sound signals is clean.
The 4,000-mAh battery brings the smartphone to almost 15 hours of battery life in our WLAN test. This is a good value, but the American smartphone can't keep up with the Samsung Galaxy M21. The battery is charged with a maximum of 10 watts, which takes over 2 hours for a full charge.
| PCMark for Android | |
| Work performance score (sort by value) | |
| Blu G90 | |
| Samsung Galaxy M21 | |
| Sony Xperia L4 | |
| Honor 9X Lite | |
| Average Mediatek Helio A25 (6032 - 7655, n=3) | |
| Work 2.0 performance score (sort by value) | |
| Blu G90 | |
| Samsung Galaxy M21 | |
| Sony Xperia L4 | |
| Honor 9X Lite | |
| Average Mediatek Helio A25 (4302 - 5364, n=5) | |
| GFXBench | |
| on screen Aztec Ruins Normal Tier Onscreen (sort by value) | |
| Blu G90 | |
| Samsung Galaxy M21 | |
| Sony Xperia L4 | |
| Honor 9X Lite | |
| Average Mediatek Helio A25 (6.7 - 7.2, n=5) | |
| Average of class Smartphone (5.5 - 166, n=202, last 2 years) | |
| 1920x1080 Aztec Ruins Normal Tier Offscreen (sort by value) | |
| Blu G90 | |
| Samsung Galaxy M21 | |
| Sony Xperia L4 | |
| Honor 9X Lite | |
| Average Mediatek Helio A25 (3.5 - 4, n=5) | |
| Average of class Smartphone (3.4 - 321, n=202, last 2 years) | |
| on screen Aztec Ruins High Tier Onscreen (sort by value) | |
| Blu G90 | |
| Samsung Galaxy M21 | |
| Sony Xperia L4 | |
| Honor 9X Lite | |
| Average Mediatek Helio A25 (4.2 - 4.5, n=5) | |
| Average of class Smartphone (0.85 - 144, n=203, last 2 years) | |
| 2560x1440 Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen (sort by value) | |
| Blu G90 | |
| Samsung Galaxy M21 | |
| Sony Xperia L4 | |
| Honor 9X Lite | |
| Average Mediatek Helio A25 (1.2 - 1.4, n=5) | |
| Average of class Smartphone (1.2 - 129, n=202, last 2 years) | |
| Blu G90 | Samsung Galaxy M21 | Sony Xperia L4 | Honor 9X Lite | Average 64 GB eMMC Flash | Average of class Smartphone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AndroBench 3-5 | 163% | 14% | 64% | 22% | 981% | |
| Sequential Read 256KB | 287.1 | 487.8 70% | 293.4 2% | 286.8 0% | 274 ? -5% | 2043 ? 612% |
| Sequential Write 256KB | 214.3 | 192.7 -10% | 165 -23% | 200.9 -6% | 177.3 ? -17% | 1659 ? 674% |
| Random Read 4KB | 38.4 | 126 228% | 61.2 59% | 44.8 17% | 59.9 ? 56% | 285 ? 642% |
| Random Write 4KB | 15.6 | 124.2 696% | 22.5 44% | 72.4 364% | 32.7 ? 110% | 327 ? 1996% |
| Sequential Read 256KB SDCard | 82 ? | 77.9 ? -5% | 83.5 ? 2% | 76 ? -7% | 77.4 ? -6% | |
| Sequential Write 256KB SDCard | 61.5 ? | 62.2 ? 1% | 62.5 ? 2% | 69.2 ? 13% | 58.3 ? -5% |
Temperature
(+) The maximum temperature on the upper side is 39.2 °C / 103 F, compared to the average of 35.1 °C / 95 F, ranging from 21.9 to 63.7 °C for the class Smartphone.
(+) The bottom heats up to a maximum of 38.8 °C / 102 F, compared to the average of 33.9 °C / 93 F
(+) In idle usage, the average temperature for the upper side is 26.6 °C / 80 F, compared to the device average of 32.8 °C / 91 F.
Speakers
Blu G90 audio analysis
(±) | speaker loudness is average but good (80.3 dB)
Bass 100 - 315 Hz
(-) | nearly no bass - on average 60.9% lower than median
(+) | bass is linear (0% delta to prev. frequency)
Mids 400 - 2000 Hz
(-) | nearly no mids - on average 60.9% lower than median
(+) | mids are linear (0% delta to prev. frequency)
Highs 2 - 16 kHz
(-) | nearly no highs - on average 60.9% lower than median
(+) | highs are linear (0% delta to prev. frequency)
Overall 100 - 16.000 Hz
(-) | overall sound is not linear (128.9% difference to median)
Compared to same class
» 98% of all tested devices in this class were better, 2% similar, 0% worse
» The best had a delta of 12%, average was 36%, worst was 134%
Compared to all devices tested
» 99% of all tested devices were better, 1% similar, 0% worse
» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134%
Samsung Galaxy M21 audio analysis
(+) | speakers can play relatively loud (83.8 dB)
Bass 100 - 315 Hz
(-) | nearly no bass - on average 69% lower than median
(+) | bass is linear (0% delta to prev. frequency)
Mids 400 - 2000 Hz
(-) | nearly no mids - on average 69% lower than median
(+) | mids are linear (0% delta to prev. frequency)
Highs 2 - 16 kHz
(-) | nearly no highs - on average 69% lower than median
(+) | highs are linear (0% delta to prev. frequency)
Overall 100 - 16.000 Hz
(-) | overall sound is not linear (119.9% difference to median)
Compared to same class
» 88% of all tested devices in this class were better, 9% similar, 3% worse
» The best had a delta of 12%, average was 36%, worst was 134%
Compared to all devices tested
» 96% of all tested devices were better, 3% similar, 1% worse
» The best had a delta of 4%, average was 24%, worst was 134%
Battery life
| Blu G90 4000 mAh | Samsung Galaxy M21 6000 mAh | Sony Xperia L4 3580 mAh | Honor 9X Lite 3750 mAh | Average of class Smartphone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battery Runtime | |||||
| WiFi Websurfing | 897 | 1298 45% | 783 -13% | 793 -12% | 1035 ? 15% |
Pros
Cons
Verdict - Affordable luxury?
The Blu G90 is certainly not a revolution in the low-cost smartphone market and offers a little less performance for 200 euros. A modern and faster SoC would have been good for the smartphone, but at least it offers decent WLAN speed and lasts quite long.
We are pleased that the screen can be bright, but at the same time, as a manufacturer, you should also consider the other end: The minimum brightness is quite high. The camera is surprisingly sharp in some scenarios, but in low light it can only show a few details. You get a lens on a class level here, but it is not as flexible as on even more modern smartphones.
The Blu G90 is a good, affordable mid-range smartphone, but not for performance-hungry users.
The "luxury" that the manufacturer advertises may be found in the chicly designed back of our white test model, otherwise we would rather call the smartphone solid. Besides, it is only interesting for users who don't need a lot of power.
Blu G90
- 09/29/2020 v7 (old)
Florian Schmitt
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