Smart Phones by stefan @ 2015-04-16
This model was mainly built for people with lower budgets, which do not have enough cash to invest in higher-specced models and Blackview has picked one of the mainstream SoCs (MT6582) of 2013 to equip it, which now also has sources for building Android 5.0 distributions.
At first we would like to thank Blackview for offering a sample of their Breeze smartphone for testing and reviewing.
“Blackview was founded in March 2013 by serial entrepreneur Xu Ming(David Xu) ,who believes that high-quality technology doesn't need to cost a fortune. Blackview is the second largest independent brand subordinated to Blackview International Group.
Blackview advocates "quality and experience", imposing strict examination on each procedure from design to production. In terms of quality, all products of Blackview are subject to strict high standards and high-quality testing processes to ensure that every user has perfect experience. We incorporate user feedback into our product range, which currently includes Acme, Omega, Sigma, Ultra, v3, Crown, Arrow, DM550, JK600, JK606 and JK890, etc. We sell at low price to customers to keep our prices competitive, and our products launched in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Laos and other place, we are ready to go global.
We hope that Blackview is a milestone-type industry brand—the essence, exquisite appearance and flexible operation of products endowed by designers convey to the user the hope and enjoyment of life.
We hope that in the entire industry Blackview is extraordinary refined—through the usage of Blackview products by users, the leisure time in life brings more happiness and affection, helps users harvest friendship and love, and creates memory and missing thoughts. Enjoyment of life is what Blackview products create for users. ”
Genius Breeze, perfectly fits for single hand control
The Blackview Breeze is a super affordable smartphone, it’s suited mainly for those who are looking for an introduction to Android as well as a stylish handset.
8M Pixels Rear Camera and 5M Pixels Front Camera, Strong LED Flash
The entry-level smartphone Breeze has a set of over-standard cameras both in the front and rear, which is actually the middle level of a smartphone camera. Breeze, is an affordable smartphone with the middle-level performance.
4.5 Inch Display
The handset’s 4.5 inch display isn’t huge, but it is relatively sharp for this category, and the dimension in 133*63.5*9.4mm which just perfectly fit for one hand operation.
Curved Surface Battery Cover
Dull polished violet black battery cover makes the smartphone not only anti-slip but also quite stylish, and the curved surface will let you feel comfortable when holding it in hand.
Mist Metallic Gloss Frame
Metallic gloss usually used in fashion field quite often, and this time, Breeze boldly bring the most popular tech in designing a smartphone, just for bring more stylish into your life.
MediaTek Quad-core 1.3GHz Processor
Running on the Android 4.4 Kitkat mobile OS, this small genius in your hand will show blazing-fast in performance, and an over standard 8GB storage offers more space for downloading, and Yes, it can be expanded to 32GB with a T-flash or SD card.
Smart, Simple, and Truly Yours
The Android KitKat 4.4 OS has a more polished design, as well as a great improvement of performance and new features, such as faster in multitasking, more beautiful full-screen album like an art, and even more updates found in it. Just feels like your office in anywhere.
Long Lasting 2,000mAh Battery
Do what you want longer without fear of killing your battery. Breeze has one of the largest batteries in its class. With the 2,000mAh battery, it gives you up to 8 hours of talk time.
Blackview Xender
Simple, fast and super cool, Xender is the world’s best phone to phone file transfer and app sharing app! No need for cable or Wifi, no need for cellular connection, and absolutely free of data usage! Top speed reaches 3,000kb/s! Download now!
Easy directly access to your application without unlocking the phone
Breeze is not only a smartphone with cool layout. It also has an amazing cool smart “heart” inside. You can conveniently wake up a series of functions of your phone by hand drawing a certain gesture on the screen, like drawing “c” to quick access camera, drawing “m” to play music, etc.
Double Tap Waking Up
Double tap on a turned off screen can easily wake up your phone
Smart Proximity Sensor
Without even touching it, Breeze can smartly feel what you want to do with a Proximity Sensor set inside. When there's an incoming call ringing, pick up the phone near to your ear, Breeze will be sensitive to put you through the call immediately. Other smart sensors are swing to answer and flip over to mute, etc.
Powerful LED Flash
Breeze incorporates supper powerful flashlights that can be used as a torch, since it’s 4-5 times more powerful than a normal flashlight, it can be used for prolonged periods of time.
Blackview were nice and have also sent us a smartphone from their low-end segment, which positions itself in the $70 area. This model is shipped inside a smaller cardboard box and as expected, we will find less features and less accessories when compared to the Omega. On the top area of the packaging, we will be able to find a photo of the product in operation, along with the total quantity of internal storage:
A short product description in multiple languages can be spotted on the back side:
By lifting the top cover, we will be able to spot the terminal, which is also wrapped inside a semi-transparent plastic bag:
After removing the top layer, we will begin to spot the bundle components:
Here we will find one silicone case, the power adapter, one white USB cable, one OTG adapter, a set of earphones with included microphone and also the battery:
The power adapter comes with the A050100E04 code name and on the output we have 5V at 1A:
The connectors of the USB cable are branded, but the wire is not non-tangle as we have seen on other models:
The earphones are quite regular, but we appreciate that the manufacturer has included them, considering the low price point:
On the in-line remote, we will find the company logo, one push-button and also the microphone port hole:
The OTG adapter is handy when we would like to attach external USB storage to the device:
The supplied battery does come with the Blackview sticker of authenticity and some specifications; here we will learn that we are dealing with a capacity of 2000mAh:
On its back side we will get to see some warning messages:
Here is also a close-up on the contacts:
The supplied transparent silicone case is meant to protect our investment but we will come back to it after a short while:
A Quick Start Guide is also included which shows us how to perform the initial steps in order to get everything going smooth:
The Breeze model comes with a pre-installed plastic screen protector, and we only have to remove the top layer, which also holds the branding:
Breeze comes with a smaller body, by incorporating a 4.5’’ capacitive touchscreen and fits well in hand; the resolution of the screen is quite low for todays’ standards, 480x854 but this aspect should save a bit of battery life and increase 3D performance:
On the top side we have the speaker grill along with the proximity and frontal 5MP-advertised camera sensor:
The lower area comes with the capacitive Menu, Home and Back buttons:
On the left side of the smartphone we will be able to spot the Volume rocker along with the chromed top frame:
On the bottom we do not have any interfaces present:
By going to the right side, we will be able to spot the Power/Standby button:
On the top area, we have the USB connector along with the headphone jack:
Here is also a closer look at the plastic chromed Volume rocker along with the Power/Standby buttons:
If we look on the back of the device, we will be reminded that this device has some design lines from the OnePlus One flagship:
The camera lens assembly has the flash LED nearby:
In the middle we will be able to locate the Blackview logo:
The lower side houses the loudspeaker grill:
The back cover can be removed quite easily in order to expose the internals:
On the upper side we have the TF card slot for expanding the storage, one microSIM slot, but also one miniSIM slot:
On the lower area we will get to see the loudspeaker module:
Let’s get the battery in and put back the cover:
The silicone case of the Breeze is able to protect the smartphone quite well, but, yes there is a “but”:
Both Volume rocker and Power/Standby button areas do not have cut-outs and in consequence they are harder to press, especially the Power button:
On the back side of the device, we will be able to spot cut-outs for both camera area along with the loudspeaker grill:
As before Blackview is proposing a stock Android experience, but with custom icons of the main applications; one default wallpaper has been set, along with some widgets:
Let’s navigate to the drawer in order to see which applications we have available:
Blackview Xender is also present on this firmware, which allows us to transfer files with iOS devices:
Next, we can remind of the default Android 4.4.2 browser:
The Calculator application has not been modified with a custom theme:
Same we can say about the Calendar application:
The Camera application is the stock MTK one, which allows taking photos or videos:
Several options can be modified by accessing the small gear icon:
Next, we could remind of the Clock application, which is quite self-explanatory:
The Contacts application is stock for the current 4.4.2 release:
The Downloads icon is a simple shortcut to the Downloads folder from main storage:
If we are using some other address than Gmail, we can easily work with the stock Email application to perform the configurations:
Facebook is one of the most used social networking applications and Blackview saw fit to include it in this release:
File Manager is stock for any MTK SoC Android release:
The FM Radio application will work well only if we connect the earphones, which will also act as an antenna:
Next we have the stock Gallery application, which will index the current photo collection for display:
The Gmail application also comes pre-installed and after we log in to our account in order to access Play Store, Gmail will also start synchronizing:
Google Maps is very handy while we are on the road, and also possesses navigation capabilities:
The stock Messaging app will permit sending and receiving regular SMS messages:
Next we have the Music application, which is the stock version and after the suitable content is indexed, it will sort it accordingly for immediate playback:
The Notebook application is something new and with it we can write short notes for easy check-up:
The Phone app comes with a skinned dialer but otherwise the menus are stock:
With Play Store, we can download an insane number of applications, books, music and games onto our terminal:
Power Saving Management application is present on the latest MTK ROMs for achieving a higher autonomy with a single charge:
QQ is an included Chinese application, which we can consider as bloatware for European users:
The Sound Recorder application is stock:
Same thing we can say about the ToDo app, which is present on all MTK ROMs:
The Torch application comes in handy and utilizes the flash LED on the back side of the Breeze smartphone:
Twitter is another heavily used social application and Blackview has preloaded it onto the Breeze:
The Videos application will index all video files present on internal and microSDHC for immediate playback:
Another social application Blackview has preloaded is WeChat:
Next, we will navigate to the Settings menu, which is the central area for modifying system-wide settings:
By going inside the SIM Management menu, we will be able to work with the different network services and allocate them to the available providers, as intended:
The Wi-Fi menu will list the currently detected networks and allow immediate connection, if we have the necessary credentials:
Bluetooth menu facilitates connection to different nearby devices:
From the Data Usage menu, we will be able to take a close look at the quantity of traffic, useful when we do not have an unlimited service:
The Wireless & Networks menu allows us to enable Airplane mode, define the default SMS application, enable Tethering & Hotspot services and more:
The Audio Profiles menu does come with some pre-defined profiles, which can be customized separately; the BesAudioEnh MTK plugin is also present inside the Sound Enhancement area:
Here is a closer look at the available options inside each profile:
The Display menu is showing us options regarding the lock screen notifications, can set up the wallpaper, adjust the brightness, disable automatic screen rotation, adjust sleep mode and more:
As with other MTK ROMs, we will be able to choose which will be the default write disk, which is useful in case we have a low quantity of internal memory. The first partition is set at 1GB, which is in most cases enough for 4.4.2 ROMs but if Blackview would have set this at 1.5GB or 2GB we would have had been much happier:
The rest of the storage space can be found on the second partition:
In order to find which applications consume most resources, we should check out the Battery section; here we can also enable the battery percentage display function:
The Apps section will display how much internal storage takes up any installed application and can also be used as a task manager:
Blackview did not omit to include several actions with the Breeze either and here we may mention Tapping Wake, Quick Start, Pick Up Call, Flip Mute and more:
From the Location area, we can monitor the applications which require GPS and enable or disable this service:
The Security menu is pretty standard and contains the usual options:
From the Language & Input area, we will be able to choose the system language, enable the spell checker, select the default keyboard, work with Voice Search and more:
The Backup & Reset menu will allow us to bring the device to the factory defaults; we haven’t seen yet a single 4.4.2 MTK device which is able to restore the settings from the Google servers after login, but Android 5.0 distributions seem to be able to fix this issue:
The Date & Time menu is pretty self-explanatory:
Schedule Power On & Off is another stock MTK feature:
The Accessibility menu is equipped with the usual options:
The Printing menu has the Cloud Print services pre-installed:
The Developer Options menu is where most users will go in order to enable USB Debugging option in order to restore different settings or flash a new ROM via SP Flash Tool:
The About Phone menu will inform us about the current Android distribution version, the baseband version, build number, but here we can also check out the current status and perform OTA updates, when available:
The Blackview Breeze smartphone has at its core the 32-bit MTK MT6582 SoC at 1.3GHz which was built on the 28nm technology, while the 3D component is taken care of the Mali 400MP at 500MHz; these are paired with a total of 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage:
The System tab will supply us more information regarding the board type, Android version, kernel, resolution, free memory and so on:
The Battery tab will show the current status; the battery sensor value is locked at 25 degrees Celsius:
The new Thermal tab will update us with the live temperatures in different areas:
The application also shows live data from the available sensors:
To test out the performances of the Blackview Breeze smartphone in more detail, we have installed some freeware benchmark apps from the Google Play Store in the internal memory (did not transfer them to a 3rd party microSDHC card, in order not to influence the test results). Afterwards, the applications were ran one-by-one, and we recorded the final scores; the obtained results were also compared with the previously tested systems, in order to spot the performance differences.
Despite the fact that Blackview advertises an 8MP back shooter, on the internal specification documents and inside the stock MTK application, we have a maximum resolution selectable as 5MP. We have observed that the camera sensor does not possess auto-focus, which is not optimal; in our tests, the camera has produced poor quality photos but we will need to check out this aspect again after the official Android 5.0 version launches for the Breeze.
The Blackview Breeze smartphone is equipped with a FWVGA display which offers good viewing angles; this is to be appreciated at such low sale price.
Time to draw the conclusions after we have taken a detailed look at the Breeze smartphone; this model was mainly built for people with lower budgets, which do not have enough to invest in higher-specced models and Blackview has picked one of the mainstream SoCs (MT6582) of 2013 to equip it, which now also has sources for building Android 5.0 distributions. As a matter of fact, one Lollipop distribution is already available at NeedRom, but we have been told that a final version should be available at the end of this month.
The smartphone is quite easy to fit into the pocket since it incorporates a 4.5’’ display; on the back of the device we can see a similar design with the OnePlus One flagship and here resides the 5MP shooter too. With the firmware which was preloaded onto our sample, the camera was not able to provide good quality shots, but we hope that this will change, even a little bit after the upgrade to the Android 5.0 OS (official).
Update! Our sample does not seem to be the final build as we have been communicated by the manufacturer; this one comes with a 0.5MP sensor for the front and one 2MP sensor for the back, while the final design will come with a 2MP shooter for the front and 5MP shooter for the back. This completely explains the low quality photos.
The GPS accuracy is similar to the other MT6582 builds from MediaTek, with relatively fast lock-on but we would not recommend it for tracking applications like Runtastic or Runkeeper.
Breeze comes with one 2000mAh battery which should allow us up to one day of normal usage. Here is also a test result from AnTuTus’ Battery Test suite:
The smartphone can be picked up for as low as $70 with coupon (GBBVB on GearBest,EBV2 on Everbuying) , which should make it an interesting buy in its final form.
We would like to thank again to Blackview for making this review possible!