Hey guys, so after two whole months of delays on the preorder for this phone, i finally got my hands on it and i've started using it. So here's my review of it as a non-sponsored consumer getting his first phone from this brand.

First hands on and unboxing experience

As with most products from blackview it comes in the same white box, you get the phone, a 33W GaN fast charger, a fairly nice feeling usb-c cable and a guitar pick (for the sim tray). There's also a small manual and... and a SAR chart of all blackview phones for some reason... the BL8800 pro's SAR seems to be 1.019W/KG for the head, 1.401 W/KG for the body and 2.478W/KG for the members, seems quite high but i can understand why (i'll come back to that later).

The phone feels very heavy but pretty nice overall, the back's deseign is a copycat of the huawei mate 40 pro RS (chinese brands are copying each other now)? But the plastic that makes the "bumpers" around the phone feel too hard to provide any cushionning in case of a fall, hence why i beleive this phone has actually pretty poor drop resistance (at this point i don't beleive any ip/fall ratings blackview has given out for this phone, they seem impossible given the weigth and construction of the device).

First power on

So the phone boots up in roughly 15 seconds to android after the blackview logo first appears. The phone appears to be bloated with a ton of preinstalled games, but not too many weird apps as earlier russian releases seemed to have. Malwarebytes say it's clean so no viruses were immediately found. I had to use ADB to remove some of the bloat and de-google the device, install f-droid and get replacements for every uninstalled system app (a pretty standard procedure for all my phones and it worked great on this one, the preinstalled chrome was buggy and crashed twice when trying to access fdroid's website for some reason).

Actual usage

The android 11 that's installed on there is pretty snappy and responsive, it didn't crash on me at all while i tested it and removed shady components that were added on top. Blackview's "doke-os" seems to be nothing more than a launcher and a few added extensions to the settings app for the phone's specific features. It's a standard android 11 otherwise.

The system takes surprisingly little space, considering most of these chinese phones usually bloat up the system partition until it takes half of the rom. Here you have about 109gb of free space to paly with out of the 128gb of free rom (still a sizeable part of it is OS reserved).

Pros

here is my list of pros for this phone:

• Great battery life, can go multiple days without a charge, especially when debloated (8350mAh)

• The speakers and microphone are quite nice and powerful, the phone has clear audio while calling

• Large ROM (128GB)

• The screen has good colors

• It has a FLIR lepton thermal camera that i use extensively and it works really nicely

• Multi-GPS support, great for finding your way outdoors (GPS, glonass, gallileo and beidu support)

• Function button that you can program to do whatever

• Status LED for notifications and charging (rare these days)

• Reactive fingerprint scanner that doesn't get fooled by other fingers and unlocks quickly

• It's a great value for what it brings to the table (i paid 450€)

• It can do reverse charging off of its enormous battery (useful to charge your wireless earbuds for example)

• It has powerful antennas and can get a signal even deep in buildings and far away in forests (in my experience

• the wifi on this is good, i've been getting decent speeds through my router's 5GHZ band

• it's dual sim, which is great for work

• it works with work gloves, as long as the setting is on

• It has 33W fast charging, which is absolutely needed with such a large battery

• It seems rather easy to service as it is held together by screws and an o-ring rather than adhesive

MeHs

These are points that are "okay" but nothing to brag about (they're not special)

• 5G, they make a great deal out of 5G but there are already tons of phones with that feature out there, even on the cheaper side, or in the rugged market. It's not special anymore

• The deseign is just a rehash of the BV8800, you can use a BV8800's case on the BL8800s and it will fit just fine.

• It has a laniard holder near the charging port, not sure why you'd use that but it's there

• It has 8gb of Ram, which is enough, but pretty standard these days, and you'll need every gb as android 11 loves ram.

• It has a mediatek 700 cpu, it has 8 cores total and it's performance is also ok, but it has a hidden con i'll talk about later (closed source)

• it has a barometer, so that's that (i never actually got a use case for this)

• It has NFC, so you can use google pay with it (most phones do)

Weaknesses/Cons

• It has powerful antennas, which mean a high SAR , and this phone emits a ton of radiation if these numbers are right (although i'm used to having a single SAR number and not 3 so i'm unusre of what the implications are here)

• it is a BRICK, like nevermind holding this bad boy to take a selfie for 10 minutes, because your arm will hurt, it's around 370 grams without a case and mine gets around 410 with the case

• The camera system is TERRIBLE. Both the 16 and 50 megapixel cameras look grainy and pixellated with the colors being very off, the macro camera is near useless and this thing can only shoot videos at 30 FPS. My iphone 6s from 7 years ago had better picture quality than this. Raw megapixel count means nothing without good software behind it, look at the google pixels, they all have the same camera module but got better because of the software.

• The screen is only 60hz in refresh rate, on a 450€ device it feels like it could be better

• It's constructed in a way that does not look durable against impacts and water. As stated before the plastic on the corners is too hard and the screen is over-exposed since it actually isn't flush with the sides, but extends up, so if it falls on the screen you're boned. Also as far as water goes look at this video, if the BL8800 is built anything like the BV8800 (and i beleive it is), it aint waterproof. It's barely water-resistant and still gets water in there over time, that will stay in and corrode the components. And guess what, blackview does not cover water damage so do NOT take your phone for a swim guys!

• Blackview themselves, their customer service is god-awful and i thought they had scammed me out of 450€ because of their piss-poor communication with the customer, i waited for two month with nothing but very vague answers in 1-2 lines of text telling me to wait for X date, then when that was overdue, another date. They never explicitely told me the phone would have that much of a delay and didn't respond to many of my emails.I would not trust this company for any repairs after this, as i would worry that they keep my phone for months while being terrible to try and converse with. I'll service the phone myself if there's a need to. So keep in mind that their customer service is basically non-existent, probably 3 guys in a building somewhere.

• I had to remove a lot of bloat and shady apps for this phone to be a "trusted" device in my eyes, i wouldn't get one if you're not tech savvy enough to debloat it, unless you're fine with your personnal data getting collected by many unknown entities. BL also clearly states in their privacy policy that they collect personnal data and shares it with their affiliates, as the law requires they have an email to ask them to stop data collection on your device but i have yet to hear anything back from them at all about this, and i doubt that this email actually leads to anything (it's [email protected]).

• The phone runs on a MEDIATEK SoC, that means no custom roms at all since unlike snapdragon they will not open source a lot of their stuff. And most "big" apps and games have code deseigned to run better on said qualcomm snapdragons SoCs, as they are open and optimized. MEDIATEKs only get through with brute processing power.

• No android updates, that's a trend with BL but usually their phones don't get any major system updates, you should know this before buying.

Conclusion

Great hardware for the price, but the crappy software that's preinstalled and the lack of support from the manufacturer sadly taints the experience you get on this phone. But once you truely make it yours it's a great phone.

If you want an ok phone, a power bank and a thermal camera in an affordable package, this is it.

I probably missed some things since i've only had the phone for a week, but it is my daily driver, feel free to comment and add to my review ^^

Post publish edit 1: I have had no issues using google services with this phone. And the networking works perfectly here in europe.

About 4 years ago the company I worked for (I’m the IT Manager there) went hunting for a rugged, affordable Android phone and Blackview was right at the top of our list. We were launching a new internal system and the numbers were quite substantial – 20 units for the development / testing phase, then a further 550 units to be deployed over a period of 18 months. We were going to lock down the phones so that it could only run our in-house app (used as a POD device by our fleet of drivers).

I had tested the 9200 previously and thought it was a great phone, it had good local support and plenty of stock availability. It was without a doubt the best option, or so I thought.

During our testing phase the 20 test units did the forced news alert that everybody is complaining about here. We tried all sorts of tricks to get rid of it (and yes, we knew about the ADB workaround) but none of them would be a viable solution for an enterprise solution such as ours. The news alerts (besides being annoying and entirely irrelevant to the country I'm in) had the unacceptable side-effect that it allowed the operator to bypass our restrictions and to abuse the phone (ie. watch youtube, browse internet etc).

So, whomever genius decided to make this a forced ‘feature’ not only cost them the sale of 550 units, they also got themselves blacklisted by the multi-national group that my company belongs to. I’m not exaggerating by saying that they knocked themselves out of a estimated 3000 unit global deal because of that decision.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

About a year ago, I bought a Blackview WAVE 7C. For the past 6 or 7 years, I had exclusively bought Blackview smartphones and had always been happy with them. Well, this will be my last one.

Here is what is wrong with it.

Their custom ROM, DokeOS, is an absolute embarrassment. Out of the box, it comes loaded with a mountain of bloatware. Not all of it can be uninstalled, some apps can only be disabled, but minor bloat is something I can live with since it happens on almost any phone.

However, the real problems started piling up.

First, the hotspot issue. I cannot connect my PC to the internet using the phone hotspot. My PC connects just fine to any other smartphone, but Blackview is the only one giving me trouble. Right now, I am forced to use an old spare phone of my father with my SIM card in it, and I actually have to connect the Blackview to that phone hotspot. It works, sure, but I should not have to jump through these hoops.

Second, the Google Play Store and app compatibility. Many of the apps I regularly use simply will not work due to some weird interaction issues between Blackview and the Google Play Store. Only mainstream apps work properly like Facebook or TikTok, none of which I even have an account for.

About 6 months in, a system update dropped. I was hoping it would fix these issues, but things only got worse. An unwanted Google search bar permanently parked itself on my home screen with no way to remove it. I installed a third party launcher and disabled the stock Blackview one just to get rid of that stupid search bar, but the update brought an even worse wave of problems straight from Blackview: system notifications that are actually just spam for stupid stuff.

During the World Cup, I was getting 3 to 4 notifications a day about soccer matches, all labeled as system notifications. Seriously? If I want to read about sports, I will look it up myself. Once the World Cup ended, I hoped the invasive notifications would stop, but no. They started spamming me with random garbage like new wallpapers or new games. This morning, I got a notification that literally just said ASMR. Like, what the hell? What does any of this junk have to do with system notifications? And of course, there is no way to turn them off.

I figured I would just flash a custom ROM of my choice, but Blackview has completely locked down the bootloader, and the risk of bricking the phone is way too high. Plus, I do not have the money for a new phone right now, otherwise I would have ditched it already.

So, I decided to use their built in User Feedback app to report all of this. But guess what? That damn app does not even work either.

Nothing works on this piece of junk. Honestly, it does not even feel like a smartphone anymore, it just feels like a pocket surveillance device.

I got two problems:

First is the ''System message'' that spams news articles and the notification cannot be removed. Not only that but it saves the picture from the notification, so it spams my gallery as well.

I longed press on the notification, but because it's a system message, I cannot disable the notification.

Second problem is the ''choose a browser and search app''. Clicking does nothing. I have a default browser app set. Idk why it keeps asking me that

I managed to get BV Tab 13 and it has Android 12 Doke OS_P 3.0 out of the box, however I'm bothered with some software issues, it is killing any third party app background processes which means no notifications, no weather updates from apps that downloaded from Google Play Store. Even when disable battery optimization on these specific apps the problem persists. I understand this is a good thing to free system resources and to prevent system overload, freezing and overheat, but I'm trying to point out that this kind of "optimization" is out of control and has many issues. Hope Blackview team will fix this asap.

Seems as if things are...going less well than they were 5 years ago. Fewer models, fewer features, the ad issue.

Hi fellow Blackview users,

I’ve been a long-time fan of Blackview smartphones and recently purchased two BL9000 Pro units. While I’m really impressed with the overall performance, particularly the improved sound quality with the dual front-facing speakers, there’s one issue that’s been bothering me: the minimum volume is way too loud.

On my previous Blackview phones like the BV8900 and BL8800 Pro, I was able to use the device at a very low volume at night without disturbing anyone. However, with the BL9000 Pro, even at the lowest setting, the sound is still too loud, making it difficult to use in quiet environments without bothering others.

I’ve already sent feedback to Blackview, asking them to look into adding more granular volume control or at least adjusting the minimum volume to a more usable level.
If you’re experiencing the same issue, it would be great if we could all send feedback together to Blackview to raise awareness of the problem.

Of course, they may not listen, but I believe it’s still valuable to express our opinions.

Let’s work together to make the BL9000 Pro a more comfortable and enjoyable device for all of us!

Hey, I got the problem again.

Since the new update a few dates ago, I get ads all the time. In notifications. Couldnt find any "smart art" apps. I even had to deinstall a lot of games and tiktok. They installed a lot of bs I dont need. I have a BV 7300 btw.

Btw, did anybody also had the problem with spotify? My spotify crashed all the time so now Im listening to music with youtube.

And do you guys also often get comments cuz auf your rugged phone? Most people are shocked that its so big.

I was biking down the road and turned at an intersection, My phone fell out of my pocket, landed face down directly out of reach and also directly in the path of traffic driving directly over. One after the other cars, a city bus, and a truck ran over my phone before the light changed making thuds as the tires ran over and shifted the phone around. I picked it up and tried to turn it on. After the usual struggle to get it working it booted up and works fine.

To fix it download adb on your computer, enable Debug mode in developer options and use this command:

$ adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.blackview.apkupgrade

No more notifications since i uninstalled this app "com.blackview.apkupgrade".

Been using this phone for about 4 months now, and although I'm very impressed by its hardware and performance, I can say without a doubt this is the worst camera I've ever had in any phone even going back to the old blackberries I used in highschool.

Aside from the absolute dogshit UI which is difficult to use and lacking many settings, pictures just look horribly washed out and desaturated. It is extremely difficult to nail proper focus 90% of the time even in broad daylight because the camera can't seem to differentiate between a large object fairly close and a distant car way down the block.

Video quality is also extremely lackluster with the previous mentioned issues as we as a total lack of stabilization of any kind. Even the most still motionless videos have to be smoothed out in post because a simple breeze will make any clip look like the handcam in breaking bad.

64mp mode being separate from the main picture setting is horrendously stupid, why is this not a setting? Why is it a different picture mode altogether?

For reference the other day I busted out by old LG G4 from the desk drawers it's laid dormant for many years. This almost 10 year old phone absolutely smokes the camera in this modern rugged phone.

I just don't get it, how in 2024 a phone manufacturer of any budget can release a camera this horrendously bed-shittingly awful and pay their selves on the back about it.

I'm actually considering switching phones because of how upset I am at the camera. I love the responsiveness and sharp screen but I've been a long time photographer and the photos from this phone are like rubbing broken glass in my eyes.

For reference: 1st photo is taken with the BV9300 Pro at default zoom, the second photo was taken with my wife's Samsung, and it's zoomed in.

Dear Sir,

I am using the Blackview BV8900, and since the March 2024 OTA security update, my phone has been acting strangely. There was a delay of more than 10 seconds when switching apps, and the BV launcher frequently stopped working. Now, the fingerprint sensor has completely disappeared.

The fingerprint sensor does not appear in the Settings - Security menu and does not work. I also received multiple error messages stating that the fingerprint sensor attached to the device was not functioning, and at some point, the fingerprint sensor stopped working altogether.

Has anyone else experienced similar issues? or solve the problems?

I recently contacted support after my (laggy, slow, crappy) tablet decided that it would no longer boot.

• It forced me to run a factory reset and then got stuck in a boot loop where it alternated between the 'Powered by Android' screen and the animated 'Blackview' screen

I have owned it for 6 months and was unable to find any updates in the form of firmware, roms, etc on Reddit, ROM sites, etc.

• The Tablet was running Tab_7_WiFi_NEU/Tab_7_WiFi_NEU12/SQ1D.211205.016.A5/221010

Support sent me the following ROM so I thought I would share it in case it helps someone else.

Software：https://mega.nz/file/7SoUGRgC#YGMqF47wTR7DueIk7Reav_Ajg9-0g8F8rtouA-zktuI
Drive：https://mega.nz/file/rWBXVD4b#sRi-xLwBuitzFRoSDIJDVB-LE2Qu8ZbmJLvGWeukKpU
Tool：https://mega.nz/file/zf5VwJDb#DKqgD2kGipyNVKRlOHzLQQji01p-IC5CmeYiJ-BJIc4
Video：https://mega.nz/file/jLBEkKoC#DQnK0jF-79RTjplw4BpLE3EfxLgJHVCmuHRmEarg-hc

Warning: after flashing via the supplied FactoryTool software it brought up an 'Erasing' screen. I am unfamiliar with these tablets but I would assume you could use the RKBatchTool instead to avoid that?

• New build information is Tab_7_WiFi_EEA_S863T_V1.0_20230530V02 which includes Android security updates from September 5, 2022

So my boss picked out Blackview T618 tablets for our techs to use during service calls, and the tablets run Android 12. I've gotten the general idea (from this sub and lack of it being mentioned online) that Blackview doesn't really *do* updates.

Of course, there are ways to force an OS update yourself, but "Blackview" isn't one of the typically listed manufacturers and their website has nothing (as far as I was able to find). Has anyone tried forcing an OS update to their tablet? How terribly/well did that go?

Just curious to hear someone [braver than me]'s story lol.

So I bought a Blackview N6000 a couple months ago, and it's been a pretty good phone tbh, but i've encountered several software and UI bugs that just set me off and I was wondering if Blackview phones get software updates or if there was a way to put on another one bc those bugs......

Has anyone managed to find a way to upgrade BlackView phones? The company has totally abandoned the customers and not providing updates. Anyone managed to run a custom ROM like Lineage OS on this device?

Basically, i need a phone which has 5G and a thermal imaging camera, while being powerful and having a big enough battery to be my daily-driver.
So following all these criteria, i narrowed the brands and phones down to this unreleased one:

https://www.blackview.fr/products/blackview-bl8800-pro

To be honest, i am aware of blackview's terrible reputation as a company, selling phones that will die within days or weeks of use, a non-existant customer support and poor QC. It doesn't require a whole lot of clicks to go to blackview's trustpilot profile and see all the stories of people's phones just... dying after 10 days, and being left alone.

The glaring issues with this company's phones seem to relate to the charging board that will fry very often. I'm a maker, i'm used to getting my hands dirty with tech and fixing my phones with parts ordered from china so changing a charging circuit wouldn't be that much of a hassle to me.

What has your experience been with this brand's phones so far? I'd like more points of view than the crowd of bots owned by blackview to fake the reviews on most websites, and the crowd of angered customers on trustpilot. Sharing your story about your BLV phone would be much appreciated 🙂

Work outdoors doing surveys, so I've been trying to find a rugged phone that I could use as my daily work phone. I think most rugged phones are tough enough. I'm more interested in their everyday performance.

When I'm working, I usually have GPS running, take photos, and sometimes check drawings, documents, or work apps at the same time. If the phone gets hot and starts slowing down after a while, it can be a pain.

I noticed the Blackview Xplore 6 with a Dimensity 9400+. I don't see a chip like that in rugged phones very often. For those of you using your phone for work outdoors, do you think extra performance actually matters on a rugged phone? Or is basic performance enough?

Wish I'd known about it's release last month... Would have saved a couple of hundred dollars (pre-release price)

Just some comments to prospective buyers of tablets (and perhaps phones?): I have the Tab 11 with Android 11. It has WiFi and cellular capability, 8GB RAM and 128GB ROM, 6580 mAh battery and 2k screen; it even comes with a cover! It is a neat fairly high spec, but inexpensive unit which seems to be working well so far.

However, it only has the March 2022 security install and unlikely to receive further ones or any additional Android upgrades. It does not have USB-C video out! It can't be flashed with a custom ROM, as nobody is creating any for BV tablets. Oh, and don't get me started on customer service - there isn't any!!

If you only want a 'one trick pony' then fine, this is it. We'll see what the future holds for its reliability and battery life.

They just released a new update for the BL9000 PRO, but it mentions new apps in the patch. I'm wondering if it's worth updating, I can't find any update notes for this thing. Is the bloatware able to be uninstalled afterwards?

I keep getting notifications about the World cup from my actual System Manager and I can't turn them off, but they wouldn't be such a problem if they didn't download the picture they had onto my camera roll. The same thing happens with livewallpaper for some reason despite it being fully disabled.