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MagyarBluboo Xfire 4G Smartphone Review
Inexpensive phones are easy to come by, but inexpensive 4G phones can be a bit more difficult. Chinese manufacturer Bluboo is jumping in with an affordable 4G smartphone costing less than $90 USD. Not only that, but its 5-inch display size is respectably large with Dual-SIM capabilities and expandable storage.
Has Bluboo cut any corners in order to incorporate 4G into such an affordable device? Let's find out how the Xfire compares to other smartphones of its size class.
Case
The low starting price isn't necessarily an indication of a poorly made device. The Blueboo Xfire is generally well-made with its smooth plastic case and Gorilla Glass front cover, though it can twist more easily than even other budget smartphones like the Doogee Y100X or iOcean Rock M6752. The phone will even creak when attempting to bend it, so there is definitely room for improvement. Back cover colors are available including Blue and White, but none have differing texture choices like the ones for the LG G4. Removing the cover is very quick and easy, though snapping it back on around the edges requires more effort than we would have liked.
As for size, the Xfire is quite thick at 9.3 mm. Its length and width are no larger than most other 5-inch smartphones since the unit lacks dedicated Android touch keys. Its 80 percent screen-to-body ratio is not uncommon for smartphones in this price range.
Connectivity
Available interfaces include the standard Micro-USB 2.0 and 3.5 mm audio ports. The Dual-SIM slots (Mini-SIM + Micro-SIM) and MicroSD reader are found behind the back cover where the battery must be removed first for direct access.
USB OTG is supported for external mice, keyboard, and storage support. We were unable to find the Miracast option, however, so wireless video streaming may not be built-in. Multimedia features that are standard on costlier devices, such as an IR blaster, are not found here.
Communication & GPS
802.11 b/g/n is supported with built-in Bluetooth 4.0. We experienced no connectivity issues when browsing and connected to a standard home network. The wireless radio is a bit on the weak side as signal quality drops to below -60 dBm when standing roughly 10 m away from the source with no obstructions in between. Doubling that distance results in a much more unstable connection reaching below -80 dBm.
GPS signal acquisition is fast with A-GPS enabled. Signal quality is also good according to GPS Test both indoors and outdoors. On the other hand, accuracy could have been better as the phone will frequently cycle between 10 feet up to 40 feet even when standing still outdoors. Its use as a driving aid is reliable nonetheless.
Telephone & Voice Quality
The Xfire officially supports GSM, WCDMA, and 4G FDD-LTE at 800/1800/2100/2600 MHz bands. Note that none of these 4G bands are used by major carriers in the U.S., so most buyers in the states will be limited to 3G connectivity. Our T-Mobile SIM card, for example, will not benefit from 4G speeds. The Xfire provides CAT4 150 Mbps speeds for those who can take advantage of the supported bands. There is no WiFi calling unlike on the Sharp Aquos Crystal and a growing number of flagship phones.
Call quality is good as we are able to hear the speaker clearly from the other end without significant static or skipping problems. Maximum volume is low, however, so speaking outdoors with ambient noise is made more difficult. Our listener from the other end says our voice can be too soft despite us speaking loudly into the microphone. Thus, while call quality and reception are far from bad, it's the low volume on both sides that can be an issue.
Cameras & Multimedia
The 8 MP rear camera produces poor results even for a budget smartphone. The Xfire appears to have issues focusing on far away objects towards the center of the picture. The minimum focal distance is about 3 cm and the camera is actually very acceptable for macro shots. For anything else, however, blurry pictures are almost guaranteed.
Even if the focusing problems can be fixed, color temperature is much too cool and colors do not appear natural at all, especially Blue. Low-light conditions suffer from soft images with grainy edges and corners and lots of noise.
Video quality is equally poor with recording resolution up to 720p only. Motion blur and the lack of good focus make for hard-to-watch videos even by smartphone standards.
Accessories & Warranty
Included extras out-of-the-box are a screen protector, Micro-USB cable and a European AC adapter. There are no earphones or case protectors as commonly included with many inexpensive smartphones.
Warranty is the standard 1-year timeline with no options to extend. It's worth mentioning that the warranty service is confined to products selling in mainland China, so it may be more difficult for buyers outside of the country to receive service in a timely manner.
Input Devices
Touchscreen
The capacitive touchscreen recognizes up to two fingers simultaneously as opposed to 5 or 10 on most other smartphones. This is likely a cost-saving measure that should have little effect on most apps since gestures of more than 2 fingers are uncommon.
Accuracy and response are both very good when texting or browsing. The display is thankfully sensitive enough for even light touches and is equally accurate around the corners and edges. Fast touch typists will find that the Xfire is able to keep up with inputs. Even so, overall responsiveness is no match for speedier flagship smartphones like the OnePlus 2 or Galaxy Note 5. Pinch-to-zoom is slower in particular and may require multiple gestures to achieve the desired zoom level. Additionally, the screen appears to have difficulty recognizing two fingers as browser pages will often "shake" when attempting to zoom in or out.
We also found an odd bug during use where sometimes the screen calibration would be off for seemingly no reason at all. Though this was rare, the standard Android touch keys on the bottom of the screen would sometimes be unresponsive. Tapping on the Home button, for example, may register as a tap nearer the center of the display. A quick reboot immediately fixes the issue until the next time it occurs.
Display
The 5-inch sub-720p display uses the same one glass solution (OGS) technology as the older iPhones, which allows the actual pixels to be closer to the surface for a better "pop-up" effect. Bluboo claims a display brightness of up to 450 nits while our own measurements show an average brightness of 400 nits on the highest setting. Contrast is good at just below 1000:1 as are many of its budget and mainstream competitors.
Subjectively, colors are not as clean as they could be with more grains than expected. This may simply be due to the low 50 PPI, so sharpness is nowhere near as good as most other 5-inch smartphones.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brightness Distribution: 91 %
Center on Battery: 395.2 cd/m²
Contrast: 941:1 (Black: 0.42 cd/m²)
ΔE Color 7.18 | 0.5-29.43 Ø4.95
ΔE Greyscale 7.25 | 0.5-98 Ø5.2
Gamma: 2.26
| Bluboo Xfire | HTC Desire 626G dual sim | Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | Acer Liquid Jade Z | Samsung Galaxy J5 | Huawei P8 lite | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Screen | -2% | 11% | -1% | 10% | 3% | |
| Brightness middle | 395.2 | 497 26% | 418 6% | 343 -13% | 349 -12% | 365 -8% |
| Brightness | 401 | 483 20% | 407 1% | 340 -15% | 353 -12% | 353 -12% |
| Brightness Distribution | 91 | 90 -1% | 95 4% | 93 2% | 93 2% | 93 2% |
| Black Level * | 0.42 | 0.67 -60% | 0.49 -17% | 0.39 7% | 0.42 -0% | |
| Contrast | 941 | 742 -21% | 853 -9% | 879 -7% | 869 -8% | |
| Colorchecker dE 2000 * | 7.18 | 6.88 4% | 3.92 45% | 5.59 22% | 5.22 27% | 5.2 28% |
| Greyscale dE 2000 * | 7.25 | 6.11 16% | 3.81 47% | 7.25 -0% | 3.96 45% | 5.85 19% |
| Gamma | 2.26 97% | 1.78 124% | 2.27 97% | 2.41 91% | 2.08 106% | 2.17 101% |
| CCT | 8157 80% | 6820 95% | 7361 88% | 7361 88% | 7308 89% | 7252 90% |
| Color Space (Percent of sRGB) | 86.5458 | 91.25 | ||||
| Color Space (Percent of AdobeRGB 1998) | 70.86 |
* ... smaller is better
Further color analyses with a spectrophotometer reveal an inaccurate grayscale. Teal and Blue colors are also represented more poorly than other colors, which is unfortunate as Red, Green, and Yellow are quite accurate for a budget smartphone. The DeltaE values for both grayscale and colors are worse than the smartphone's closest budget and mainstream competitors.
Outdoor usability is average on a cloudy day and on the maximum brightness setting. The backlight is not strong enough for comfortable use under direct sunlight. The Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, for example, can be as bright as 600 nits for better visibility under sunlight.
Viewing angles are good due the underlying IPS panel. Colors and brightness shift just slightly when viewing from off-center angles.
Performance
The Xfire is equipped with your expected MediaTek SoC and requisite 1 GB RAM that is common on most budget smartphones. The same quad-core MT6735 processor can also be found on the ZTE Blade V6 and Doogee Valencia2 Y100 Pro. Meanwhile, the integrated Mali-T720 GPU is most similar to the budget Adreno 302 or older Nvidia Tegra 3. According to CPU-Z, the CPU can stop all its cores except for one at just 221 MHz to conserve power. All cores are capable of running at up to 1 GHz simultaneously. We suspect that the smartphone is underclocked as the MT6735 SoC itself is officially rated for up to 1.5 GHz.
CPU Performance
CPU benchmarks place the Xfire below the low-end Snapdragon 210 in terms of raw performance. The Cat S40, for example, is 50 percent faster than our Bluboo in multi-threaded operations. Mainstream smartphones with at least a Snapdragon 410 will be faster than the MT6735 in essentially all cases.
| PCMark for Android | |
| Computer Vision score (sort by value) | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Storage score (sort by value) | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Work 2.0 performance score (sort by value) | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Work performance score (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
| CAT S40 | |
| AnTuTu v5 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
| CAT S40 | |
| Geekbench 3 | |
| 32 Bit Multi-Core Score (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| CAT S40 | |
| 32 Bit Single-Core Score (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| CAT S40 | |
| 64 Bit Multi-Core Score (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
| 64 Bit Single-Core Score (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
System Performance
Browser-based benchmarks such as Subspider, Browsermark, and Octane show that the Xfire is slower than the similarly priced Doogee Y100X by noticeable margins. More mainstream devices like the Motorola Moto G 2015 are noticeably faster.
Subjectively, system performance suffers from stuttering and latency when switching between applications or when simply browsing the Internet. Actions such as scrolling and zooming are not very smooth on the Xfire. The slow performance also means that inputs are more likely to not be registered when navigating through menus or the Home screen.
| Browsermark - 2.1 (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| Octane V2 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| CAT S40 | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| WebXPRT 2015 - Overall (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| CAT S40 | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| JetStream 1.1 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
* ... smaller is better
The integrated 8 GB eMMC does not provide a lot of space to work with as only 4.99 GB is immediately available to the end user. Luckily, MicroSD is supported up to 32 GB for additional storage space as needed.
Transfer rates for the internal SSD are very good on the Bluboo and rival competitors such as the Moto X Play. Performance almost matches the much more expensive Galaxy Note 4 in some cases such as in sequential read and random write speeds. This doesn't mean performance is faster, however, as the CPU is still the bottleneck when installing or launching applications.
Gaming Performance
Synthetic benchmarks like Basemark X 1.1 rank the Xfire below most other popular 5-inch smartphones including the already old Mali-400 MP. The integrated ARM Mali-T720 is clearly not designed for playing 3D titles on high resolutions, so it is actually a good match for the Xfire and its lower 960 x 540 screen resolution. 2D titles are easily playable while the smartphone will struggle in 3D titles such as Asphalt 8 with more stuttering than usual. That's not to say that such games are unplayable, but aliasing and textures are all noticeably tuned down.
GFXBench shows no throttling when under stress for over 25 minutes. Frame rates and performance are both consistent throughout the entire stress test with no dips whatsoever. A number of flagship devices may throttle CPU or GPU performance after a few minutes as a means of reducing heat, but the Bluboo already runs cool and underclocked.
| GFXBench 3.0 | |
| on screen Manhattan Onscreen OGL (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| CAT S40 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| 1920x1080 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| CAT S40 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| Epic Citadel | |
| Ultra High Quality (sort by value) | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| Motorola Moto X Play | |
| Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 | |
| High Quality (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
| High Performance (sort by value) | |
| Bluboo Xfire | |
| Samsung Galaxy Note 4 | |
| Doogee Nova Y100X | |
Emissions
Temperature
Surface temperatures are low across the board even during higher processing loads. Like most other smartphones, the top end can become significantly warmer than the bottom as the PCB and processors are usually located near the earpiece.
We were able to measure a surface temperature of 36 C when running Stability Test 2.5. This is cooler than many competing smartphones such as the Galaxy J5. Users should never have to worry about uncomfortable temperatures during extended use.
(+) The maximum temperature on the upper side is 36 °C / 97 F, compared to the average of 35 °C / 95 F, ranging from 21.9 to 56 °C for the class Smartphone.
(+) The bottom heats up to a maximum of 35.6 °C / 96 F, compared to the average of 33.8 °C / 93 F
(+) In idle usage, the average temperature for the upper side is 24.3 °C / 76 F, compared to the device average of 32.7 °C / 91 F.
Speakers
Sound quality is below average due to poor bass reproduction and muffled sounds. Music playback feels distorted and this only increases in intensity at higher volume settings. The speaker is loud at its maximum setting, so at least it can be used for the occasional YouTube video.
Static is prevalent when using the speaker as a speakerphone for calls. The crackling makes it a bit more difficult to hear the caller clearly.
Battery Life
Runtimes are good at just above 7 hours of constant WLAN use at 150 nits brightness. This compares favorably against the Huawei P8 Lite and HTC One M9, but falls behind the Moto G 2015 and Galaxy J5. Its battery capacity is slightly higher than the average 5-inch smartphone at 2750 mAh.
| Bluboo Xfire 2750 mAh | HTC Desire 626G dual sim 2000 mAh | Motorola Moto G 3. Gen 2015 XT1541 2470 mAh | Acer Liquid Jade Z 2300 mAh | Samsung Galaxy J5 2600 mAh | Huawei P8 lite 2200 mAh | HTC One M9 2840 mAh | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battery Runtime | -15% | 17% | -10% | 22% | -27% | -19% | |
| Reader / Idle | 982 | 878 -11% | 1364 39% | 1292 32% | 715 -27% | 805 -18% | |
| WiFi v1.3 | 435 | 398 -9% | 526 21% | 523 20% | 495 14% | 351 -19% | 348 -20% |
| Load | 294 | 220 -25% | 264 -10% | 176 -40% | 350 19% | 194 -34% | 236 -20% |
| WiFi | 573 |
Pros
Cons
Verdict
There are compromises for a smartphone under $90 USD. The 5-inch display and 4G support are the two major selling points for the Bloboo Xfire. On the surface, the bright backlight, removable battery, and Dual-SIM support should make for a good versatile phone.
The drawbacks are easy to spot after spending just a week or so with the smartphone. The low resolution display is the least of its worries as the camera is terrible and overall system performance is slow. U.S. users may not be able to take advantage of the 4G bands at all and the lack of WiFi calling hurts it as a versatile smartphone.
If 4G is not important, then the Doogee Y100X is a better deal for under $100 USD. Otherwise, the Bluboo Xfire is a good backup or secondary phone because of its price and Dual-SIM support.
Make sure the supported 4G bands are available from your major carriers first before purchasing the Xfire 4G for its 4G capabilities.
Bluboo Xfire
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10/12/2015 v4 (old)
Allen Ngo
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