- Last week, I took a look at two of the best
budget smartphones and compared them,
the Honour 6X and the Moto G5 Plus.
This week I wanna drop the budget even more
to 59.99 to be exact.
I'm gonna be comparing the BLU Advance 5.0,
which I picked up on Amazon for around 60 bucks
and the Samsung Galaxy S8+ for around 850 bucks.
(upbeat music)
The Samsung Galaxy S8+ is my daily driver, as of now.
I know it's obviously gonna beat this phone
in every single category,
but I really just wanna see
how close the BLU Advance 5.0
can get for significantly less money.
Let's start with the build.
The Advance 5.0 has a solid build for the price.
The back is a fake leather material which feels
good enough in the hand and is really grippable.
The back panel also comes off and gives you access to
two SIM card slots, a micro SD card slot,
and a removable battery.
The battery is only 1,800 mili-amp hours,
but it seems to last for about 3 and a half hours
of on-screen time on pretty heavy use.
That's pretty mad battery life,
but I'll give it a pass here
as maybe I'll carry an extra battery on hand with me
and swap them out with ease.
The S8+, on the other hand,
is a glass and metal sandwich
which feels amazing in the hand, but the back is sealed on.
You still have access to a micro SD card slot,
but the battery is not removable.
The battery is, however,
3500 mili-amp hours which equates to
about four and a half hours of screen on time for me.
The S8 battery is almost double the capacity of the
Advance 5.0, but that, of course,
doesn't equate to double the amount of screen on-time
because the screen resolutions and sizes of the screens
are radically different.
The S8+ packs a 6.2 inch, 1440p display,
which is by far the best screen on the market,
in my opinion.
Pixels are nearly impossible to spot,
colours are super vibrant,
and blacks are really, really deep.
In total contrast, the Advance 5.0 has a 5 inch screen
that is not HD resolution.
For an extra 10 bucks, this phone comes in an HD model,
but I was trying to keep things super budget here,
so I have the non-HD model on hand.
Colours are pretty good for the price,
but pixels are really easy to spot,
and the viewing angles are not great either.
I think that it's a good screen
considering the price of this phone,
but don't expect to be blown away by it.
Additionally, the bezels look huge when compared to the S8+,
which has about an 84% screen to body ratio,
and since I have the white model here,
the black bar surrounding the screen
is a lot more noticeable
than it is on my black S8+.
If you're getting this phone, I would highly recommend
getting the black model as that little black bar
around the screen drove me crazy,
and I bet it would drive some of you crazy as well.
Going back to the build for a quick sec,
the button placement on both of these devices is not ideal,
but surprisingly I think I like the Advance 5.0 better.
The buttons feel extremely mushy and are pretty cheap,
but they're nicely textured and they're easy to hit
with one hand.
I sometimes find myself hitting the volume down button
as if it were the power button so it would be nice
to have a different texture on each set of buttons
or to have the volume markers on the left side.
Still, even with this flaw, it takes the cake over the S8+.
Here's why.
The S8+ has a dedicated button to activate
its personal assistant, Bixby,
which doesn't bother me, however, the placement does.
It is in the spot where I would normally put my finger
to lower the volume,
so I find myself accidentally opening up Bixby,
all the time.
Turning on the phones leads to another major difference:
software.
Software in the BLU Advance 5.0, looks pretty stock,
but it is running the ageing Android Lollipop.
It works and looks fine, but all of the new cool features
that are gonna come with Android O,
or even on Android Nougat right now, will not be found here.
The S8+, on the other hand, has the Android Nougat,
but it is pretty heavily skinned in terms of the aesthetics,
and there definitely is some bloatware.
Regardless, I will take this skinned version of Android
over Lollipop any day of the week.
The performance on the Advance 5.0 is a lot slower
than the performance on the S8+,
but I think that that has more to do with the specs
than the software.
The specs that the BLU Advance 5.0 packs are the following:
A quad core 1.3 gigahertz processor,
768 megabytes of RAM,
and four gigabytes of internal memory
with expandability up to 64 gigabytes
with the micro SD card slot.
The S8+ on the other hand has
64 gigabytes of internal storage,
a Snapdragon 835 processor,
and four gigabytes of RAM.
These specs are obviously in a totally different class,
but honestly the BLU Advance 5.0 holds up.
It is noticeably slower when opening up apps
or gaming side by side,
but when using it by itself the phone is fine,
and there were only a few times where apps crashed on me,
or I got annoyed with how slow it was.
Don't expect buttery, smooth performance,
and graphically intensive games,
but for daily things like web searching or texting,
going through Twitter, stuff like that,
this phone will get the job done.
It's honestly really impressive for 60 bucks.
The last topic to discuss here is the camera.
The S8+'s camera is my favourite camera
on the market to date,
which means that the BLU Advance 5.0
has a lot to live up to.
It's not a good camera by any means, but it is passable.
Photos are never as sharp as I would like them to be,
but it will work for shooting your food
or taking a quick landscape.
So overall, what did this comparison tell me?
It told me that budget phones are getting really good
and there has been a huge advancement in how good they are,
in the past few years.
It has me really excited for technology in the future,
that is awesome but doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
If you're looking to get into the smartphone game,
and you have a pretty small budget,
this is my pick right here.
But if you have about $200 more,
the Moto G5 Plus and Honour 6X are infinitely better,
in terms of the experience that they provide,
and I made a video comparing them last week on this channel.
Regardless, I appreciate you guys all taking the time out
to watch this video.
Like the video if you enjoyed it,
subscribe if you loved it,
and we hope to catch you guys in the next one.
Bye.