Blackview BV8000 Pro Review

Overview

Blackview has definitely become synonymous to reliable rugged smartphones. Its BV series includes a total of nine devices and the tenth - Blackview BV9000 Pro - is in the works. It is with the BV6000, however, that the brand has become more widely known and it has stabilized its position with the BV7000 Pro, which performed better than expected, and logically, the Blackview BV8000 Pro has gained lots of interest. The device competes directly with the Ulefone Armor 2 and other rugged smartphones with similar specifications. It currently retails for around USD 240 and on paper, it sounds like a great deal. So let's go through our usual review routine and check whether this model lives up to expectations.

Specifications

Blackview BV8000 Pro is a rugged smartphone with an IP68 certified body (dust-tight and waterproof). It features a 5-inch IGZO display from Sharp with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. According to the manufacturer, the display panel covers 95% of the NTSC colour space. Power is supplied by a 4180 mAh battery with MediaTek Pump Express Plus 2.0 support and a 9V/2A fast charger. It is said to charge for 2 hours and a half and to provide up to 27h of talk time, 19h of music playback, 8h of video playback (.mp4), 14h of browsing, 672h of standby time (28 days). Hardware-wise, the model is built around a 64-bit MediaTek Helio P25 (MT6757CD) system-on-chip (officially confirmed by Blackview). The latter is manufactured after TSMC's 16nm FinFET process and includes four 2.6GHz Cortex-A53 CPU cores and four 1.6GHz Cortex-A53 cores. A 900MHz dual-core Mali-T880 GPU is responsible for the graphics. The model is equipped with 6GB of dual-channel, LPDDR4 RAM clocked at 1600MHz. The built-in memory measures 64GB and can be expanded with up to 512GB. The BV8000 Pro sports a 16MP Samsung S5K3P3 primary camera with a 5-element lens, blue film, f/2.0 aperture, phase-detection autofocus and LED flash. The front-facing snapper is equipped with an 8MP Hynix HI846 sensor and an f/2.4 lens. The device supports plenty of network bands, including 2.5G CDMA at 800MHz for North America, 4G FDD-LTE and TDD-LTE ones. Its wireless connectivity options include dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Cast display, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.1. In addition, despite being based on a MediaTek chipset, this smartphone supports full-featured NFC, including Android Beam and Tap & Pay services. It also works with GPS and GLONASS. The BV8000 Pro has a USB Type-C port with OTG support and a 3.5 mm jack. It arrives with Android 7.0 Nougat, side-mounted fingerprint sensor and an NXP Smart PA amplifier for audio. Here's the full set of Blackview BV8000 Pro specifications.

What's in the box

Blackview BV8000 Pro arrives in a flat, white rectangular box with the brand name on it and the model name in the bottom right corner. The device takes up the whole left compartment and to its right, there are three compartments - for the USB and OTG cables, charger and earphones. Below the smartphone, there's an envelope containing the rest of the accessories. The full package includes:

• 9V/2A fast charger (EU plug)
• USB Type-C cable
• OTG cable
• Micro-USB to Type-C adapter
• Earphones
• Screen protector
• Screwdriver with spare screws for the backplate
• Quick start guide