Not all smartphones are ment to be beautiful and fragile. Some of them are made for hard work, that;s why they are rugged and can take a beating. For this reason Blackview created here the Blackview BV6000. BV6000 is a pretty rugged smartphone, that is also and waterproof. From what we usually see “rugged” smartphones have low-end specs and an old version of Android. But Blackview BV6000 is about to receive Android Nougat in mid-November.
In the mean time and till Android 7 comes, an OTA is scheduled to be released correcting some bugs. The update is due tomorrow and the improvements it brings are as follow.
- No notification will show up about the device being rooted when installing certain applications
- The max volume of the recorded videos has been optimized to be louder and clearer
- Corrected a language mistake of the Russian translation in UI
Design
Blackview has installed some really good specs inside the BV6000 for a rugged mobile. A 4.7-inch 1280×720 resolution display with Gorilla Glass 3 protection is present. Obviously, the BV6000 is not meant to look beautiful as most mobiles try to look. This mobile is made in order to be able to take on a camping trip, or to a construction site. It’s meant to withstand drops, even in water. So for sure it’s not going to be a pretty looking phone, but it needs to be functional. The BV6000 is a thick smartphone, like 16.6mm thick, which for comparison, you could take three Moto Z smartphones and stack them on top of each other and it would still be thinner than the BV6000. Dimensions of the BV6000 are 81mm x 152.3mm x 16.6mm, and it weighs a hefty 247 grams.
As for the way is made Blackview went a pretty interesting route with the frame here for the BV6000. It’s not completely plastic nor completely aluminum. But basically a hybrid of both. The left and right sides are metal. Which feels good in the hand, especially when using the buttons on both sides. While the rest is plastic, and can take a few bumps and bruises. Each corner has a bumper, which will take some impact, instead of damaging the display or the internals of the BV6000. That does make the phone heavier and thicker, but it’s all worth it in the end. Considering you are buying this phone because it is rugged, and not because of the way it looks.
There are quite a few buttons on the left and right side here. So on the right side, there are the volume and power buttons, each one is individual, so there is no “volume rocker” here. The left side houses a dedicated camera button, PTT and SOS buttons. The buttons are all fairly clicky, and feel good when you’re clicking them. They don’t feel mushy like some might. The headphone jack is at the top with the micro USB port at the bottom. Surprisingly, there are flaps over both of these. It’s a bit surprising since both Sony and Samsung have waterproof smartphones that don’t use flaps to cover either of these ports. But that also might lead to the higher price tag on those smartphones.
The back of the device has the camera . Below it you can see something like a small door with the “Blackview” logo and some other information on it. That door houses the micro SD and SIM card slots. The “door” is not that easy to open and I guess is because is waterproof. On the front of the phone, we’re looking at some mighty large bezels, as well as capacitive buttons below the display. These include menu, home and back.
Hardware
The BV6000 is powered by the MediaTek Helio P10 processor (which is a quad-core Cortex-A53 2.0GHz, and a quad-core Cortex-A53 1.0GHz cluster), with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Helio P10 outperforms the Snapdragon 617. Part of that is due to the higher clock-speed on the Helio P10. Of course, having that 3GB of RAM to back it up does definitely help.
Features
The BV6000 has as main camera a 13MP at the back with OmniVision OV13853 sensor (interpolated resolution is 16MP) with an f/2.2 aperture. It can also shoot 1080p video at 30 FPS. The front-facing camera here is a 5-megapixel shooter, with an aperture of f/2.2and the interpolated resolution here is 8MP.
For location tracking, the Blackview BV6000 utilizes GPS, A-GPS, and GLONASS. WiFi connectivity includes 802.11 b/g/n, as well as WiFi Direct and WiFi Hotspot. Bluetooth 4.1 and A2DP is thrown in for good measure, and it is charged up using a micro USB connector. Now inside the BV6000, there is a dual-SIM card slot, this is micro SIM card for both slots.
Unfortunately, the BV6000 does indeed have a rear-facing speaker. But, luckily, it’s almost impossible to cover it up. This is because BV6000 is really thick. Even when sitting the device on a table, the sound still doesn’t come out muffled from the back-end. Of course I don’t think you expect to hear a concert from BV6000.
Battery
BV6000 comes with a 4500mAh battery, and since we are speaking for a 4.7-inch display with 720p resolution, se speak for a very long use. Let’s not forget the fact that the Helio P10 helps, allowing you to get some incredible battery life. You could likely get around 6-7 hours of on-screen time out of this smartphone on a single charge.
Now the BV6000 has a huge battery, but there’s no fast charging technology. Of course you can use a Quick Charge 3.0 wall adapter to charge it fast, but still that big battery takes some time.
Conclusion
The Blackview BV6000 is a pretty impressive smartphone for a rugged mobile. If you dropped the BV6000 it wouldn’t even have a mark on it. Of course, we’re looking at a phone that is meant to be tough and not fragile as most mobiles are. If you are looking for a rugged mobile, you can find one at flash sales at eFox. You can use our coupon BV6K5Y to get a 5€ discount and buy it at the unique price of €184.99 the high version of 3GB RAM and 32 GB of ROM.