Blackview BV9600 Pro

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• Blackview BV9600 Pro $299.99
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Blackview BV9600 Pro 4G Phablet

Because of the success of the BV9500, Blackview company introduced two models: BV9600 Pro and BV9600 Plus. These are outdoor mobile phones of the upper middle class, which attract attention with some functions, which we haven’t seen before in this class.

When it comes to design, there are seldom outdoor smartphones that somehow stand out – and that definitely applies to the BV9600 as well. Both models have a rubber back, a metal frame and a display with notch protected by gorilla glass. Despite the 6.21 inch display, the 162.9 x 81.4 x 10 millimetres devices are not oversized, but one-handed operation is likely to be difficult.

What the manufacturer emphasizes in his presentation is the simple design of the BV9600, which completely dispenses with any colour accents. The back is also completely flat despite the rubber coating and has a matt surface that looks pretty good at least on the pictures. We already know this from the AGM A9!

The metal frame contains a dual-sim slot that can be operated either with two sim cards or with one sim card and one micro SD card. The BV9600 also comes with USB-C, but obviously without a jack connection.

Blackview describes the BV9600 as “unbreakable” and directly presents some videos on the presentation page as “proof” of this. The extent to which the BV9600 outperforms other outdoor telephones will only become apparent in the detailed test report. Waterproof to IP standard is also available again, so longer immersion is no problem at all for the BV9600. Further features are a glove mode, which allows the display to be operated even with standard gloves, and a particularly good GPS antenna, which is supposed to be particularly precise when navigating.

It’s not really exciting until this section, because the specifications make the BV9600 a pretty interesting device. Right at the beginning we clarify the difference between the Pro and the Plus model: the Blackview BV9600 Pro uses a fingerprint sensor in the frame, the Blackview BV9600 Plus uses a fingerprint sensor in the display. In addition, the Plus comes directly with Android 9 Pie and costs 369.99 dollars UVP, the Pro comes with Android 8.1 Oreo and costs 449.99 dollars UVP. The latter is already available, by the way, while the former is still financed by IndieGoGo.

Otherwise the devices resemble each other like an egg. This starts with the display. A 6.21 inch display with a notch is used. A special feature in this class is that Blackview does not rely on IPS technology, but uses an AMOLED display in both devices. Many users should be very happy about this, especially because of the Notch. Both models use the Helio P60 processor from Mediatek, which has attracted a lot of attention in other devices so far. The eight-core processor is very fast, the system runs without jerkers and 3D games at medium to high settings are also packed by the SoC. A few benchmarks to the Helio P60 can be found for example in this review of the Umidigi F1. The processor is supported by six gigabytes of RAM – so multitasking shouldn’t be a problem. For the user, the BV9600 provides 128 gigabytes of internal memory, which can even be expanded using a micro SD card.

The battery measures a full 5580 mAh, which seems to be quite a lot for a smartphone, but is below average for an outdoor smartphone. Nevertheless, the capacity should be sufficient for one and a half to two days of battery life.

As far as the camera is concerned, Blackview actually advertises everything that other manufacturers also say about themselves: Great portrait mode, good pictures in low-light ratios, of course better than the predecessor, etc… But how good the photos really become can only be seen in the test report, as you can’t give too much on advertising photos most of the time. Sometimes they are not even taken with a mobile phone, but with a real camera with interchangeable lenses. But at least we can list the technical data: On the back there is a dual camera setup with 16.0MP + 8.0MP resolution and sensors from Samsung. In the predecessor, however, sensors from Sony were used. On the front there is an unspecified front camera with a resolution of 8.0MP.

Blackview’s new upper mid-range outdoor series brings interesting features to the rubberized mobile phone segment that we had previously only seen on “normal” smartphones. Especially the new AMOLED display should be an argument for many people to buy. How well the smartphones perform in practice will be explained in the detailed test report. But since Blackview hasn’t made any big blunders in the past, we are relatively confident that the Blackview BV9600 Pro and the Blackview BV9600 Plus will be good phones.

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