BLU is one of those OEMs you’d love to see succeed. Why? Simply because they offer great devices at amazing prices. We recently reviewed the BLU Life Pure, which I was pretty impressed with it. It essentially had the same spec-sheet as the Galaxy S4, and is only $349 off-contract, except there’s no LTE. Although, it’s still hard to recommend it over the Nexus 5, since it’s the same price with better specs and updates straight from Google. Now BLU has the Life Pure Mini, following the trend of the “mini” phones that other OEMs have been doing lately. Surprisingly, there’s not too many differences between the two. The only real differences is the 4.5-inch 720p display on the Life Pure Mini and the 5-inch 1080p display on the Life Pure. There’s also 2GB of RAM on the Life Pure, vs 1GB on the Mini. As far as the camera’s go, we’re looking at 13MP/5MP on the Life Pure, and 8MP/2MP on the Life Pure Mini. Also 16GB of storage on the mini and 32GB on the Life Pure. Now this next spec is a bit surprising. The Life Pure has a 2000mAh battery, and the Life Pure Mini has a 3000mAh battery. Yes you read that right, the Life Pure Mini has a larger battery than it’s big brother.
So now that the specs are out of the way, we are going to compare these two devices. The Life Pure Mini is sold at $249, while the Life Pure is at $349. Both are really great price points for these devices. As far as build quality goes, I actually like the Pure Mini better. The edges – especially around back – are a bit more sharp on the Life Pure. While on the Life Pure Mini it’s much more tappered, and smooth. Making it very nice to hold. Although they are both made of the slippery, glossy plastic. But that is easily “fixable” since BLU gives you a nice clear case in the box with both devices, and they give you a screen protector as well. Which is very nice to have, in my opinion. The bezels on both devices are rather large, but that’s coming from a guy using the G2, Moto X and the G Flex, which have very small bezels. Another interesting thing I found on both devices is that the capacitive buttons are slightly different between the two. Nothing too crazy, but the back button is different on both devices. It’s hard to show in pictures since the devices are both white and the capacitive keys light up in white.
Software is virtually the same on both devices. Both are running Android 4.2.1 with BLU’s custom UI. Which is pretty colorful, but not too bad. It’s also pretty light-weight, which makes the skin fine with me. Both the Life Pure and Life Pure Mini are very snappy as well, which is surprising coming from a quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A7 chip, probably a MediaTek chip.
Overall, these are both really great devices. You can check out my BLU Life Pure review here, and the Life Pure Mini will be out later this week. For the pricing on these two, it’s hard to go wrong with either device. Although, it’s still kind of hard to recommend either of these over the Nexus 5 which is priced at $349 and does have LTE.