Bluboo wants to open market in Spain, and for this he makes a very daring bet. There are several mobiles that this Chinese manufacturer has on the market. One of the main ones is the Bluboo Maya, a smartphone of less than 70 euros price.
Considering that the high and medium range are tremendously saturated, the Bluboo Maya competes to be one of the best value mobiles. Its features are a priori more than enough for many users who will not use it for anything other than talking, sending messages to interact on social networks.
In addition, Bluboo uses a good camera as a claim. How it works we have tested for the analysis of Bluboo Maya, checking if it really works as well as the manufacturer says.
The main drawback that can be put to the device, and it is not a minor matter, is the absence of 4G. In 2016 it is practically essential to enjoy the fastest mobile browsing speed. It is an important stumble, although for its price nothing more can be demanded.
With an attractive external appearance and more than enough specifications, it struggles to gain a foothold in the Spanish market. It will not be easy, although certainly considering how reduced its price, many will be convinced when they read our opinion on the Bluboo Maya.
Aesthetically at a good level
When reviewing Bluboo Maya, the sensations have been contradictory. On the one hand, its back cover comes with a rough texture that forms a rather attractive mosaic. However, when we lift it we notice that it is a mobile of quite weight; are 184g, although it is not very stricpoint. Its size, however, is considerable due to the 5.5 inches of its screen.
The thickness, 8.3mm, is not too much. When handling the Bluboo Maya you do not have the feeling of handling an excessively large smartphone, because although it can be considered as a phablet, it fits perfectly in the hand and in medium-sized pockets. Its exact dimensions are 153 x 77 x 8.3 mm.
In addition to the aforementioned finish of the back cover, made of plastic and quite difficult to remove, the surrounding aluminum chassis stands out. Bluboo Maya’s design conveys solidity and elegance, and a mobile of this type can’t be asked for much more. It is also IP63 certified for dust and water resistance.
The buttons chosen are touch, the usual three, while for Power and Volume you have chosen to innovate. It is a minor but significant change, the fact that the two Volume buttons are not part of oneself. You can see on the side that the three are practically the same in size and shape.
In the front area is the selfie camera and the notification LED. One of the things that the Bluboo Maya maintains, unlike other newly released terminals, is the removable battery. This feature is a relative advantage, as it allows you to change it if for any reason it breaks down.
Phablet size HD display
The screen of the Bluboo Maya is large, and that’s quite a statement of intent. It is a smartphone aimed at the type of audience that wants a big, beautiful mobile and that does not cost a lot of money. 5.5″ is what the panel of this terminal offers.
The resolution of it, 1280×720 pixels, stays a little far from what begins to standardize, which is 1080p. However, the jump has not yet occurred among the mobiles in this segment, so it can be said that the Bluboo Maya complies in this aspect. The screen looks remarkable and the touch response is excellent.
As with other mobiles, especially those coming from China, the Bluboo has a black frame around its screen. In his favor it must be said that it is less than that of other terminals.
The type of panel chosen by the Chinese company for its most basic mobile is the JDI TFT, with 2.5D, that is, slightly curved at the edges. Fingerprints can be a problem, as the screen is a real magnet for them.
The brightness of the Bluboo Maya screen moves in the line of almost everything on this smartphone. Enough is enough: worse results have been seen, but also better. This makes outdoor visibility enough to check your phone, although it may offer too many reflections.
Hard to give more power for less money
Considering the audience targeted by Bluboo Maya, it’s no wonder that the chosen processor isn’t one of the most powerful on the market. Despite this, the 1.3 GHz quad-core MTK6580 is more than compliant when it comes to running the Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system. You don’t have just lag when it comes to managing multiple applications, especially if they’re not too heavy.
The internal features of the Bluboo Maya are completed by its 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage, expandable capacity by MicroSD card, something that is appreciated and a lot.
You can jump from one app to another, open and close them without any hangs or delays, which is quite common in these economical terminals. It is a sign of the good work done by Bluboo when it comes to optimizing the performance of your mobile phone.
Because of its characteristics, it was to be expected that the fingerprint reader was missing. It’s a part of the hardware that costs money, and including it would have triggered the price beyond 70 euros, so Bluboo has dispensed with it for this model. Anyone who wants to buy it will have to get used to unlocking the mobile in the conventional way, although they can also do so using a voice command.
The obvious limitations of a processor with Mali 400 GPUs, several years ago, do not cause the processor temperature to skyrocket. The Bluboo Maya heats up when it is used intensively for more than half an hour, but it’s something that happens with almost every smartphone available right now. In any case, it dissipates the heat quite well in the rear area.
AnTuTu Benchmark, the program used to measure the power and performance of the mobile, yields the expected results. The Maya’s 3D graphics suffer quickly during the test, although in other circumstances it can make them work relatively easily.
In terms of scoring and ranking, it performs discreetly, which puts it very low in the table. However, as we have checked in this analysis of Bluboo Maya, optimization makes the user experience all you can ask for.
Now let’s go with one of the strong dishes: the games. Will this phone be able to play the latest pitches? The answer is yes. Obviously we haven’t tried all the games for this analysis, but we have tried a very demanding one and the other not so much: Real Racing 3, Asphalt 8: Airborne and Farming Simulator.
The response has been good, running without lag and very fluidly. The resolution is maintained in the HD 720p, although it is obviously noticeable that you do not operate a high-end terminal. You can play comfortably, but although the fluidity is more than enough, it doesn’t become excellent.
The negative point is the temperature that the processor reaches after a few minutes of playing, feeling more increased by the aluminum frame.