I bought this phone after I had a Samsung S7 Edge and then a Nexus 6p so I am used to posh, expensive phones. Prior to the Samsung I also had a number of higher class models all the way back years ago to an Apple iPhone 4.

About 3 weeks ago, the Nexus (which was a great phone) suddenly decided to fry it's display. I couldn't sell it as I couldn't wipe it and I couldn't repair it as the repair would have been £275.

I researched and found excellent reports of the Blackview P2 and then got it from Amazon.fr.

Since it arrived it has been great in every day use - I use it a lot so don't get much more than a day out the battery but I am a very heavy user. The phone is reliable and fast and apart form a couple of google problems which got sorted, it is a good phone.

Would be good to get more a community feel going on in this forum so I thought I would share my experience.

You are basically comparing a low end $160 -$170 smartphone to a high end $800-$1000 smartphone...

Normally there shouldnt be any cause for comparison , because NORMALY the high end smartphone should win outright ...

But not with the BlackView P2 ...

It more than matches the high end phones in every aspect and beats them in most (specs - battery , internal storage , RAM etc) and dismally beats them when it comes to price ...

The Blackview is worth every penny you spend on it ...

WHEN YOU GO BALCKVIEW , YOU WILL NEVER GO BACK !!!

Samsung and the iphone , they are that expensive because of the name and great marketing stratagy .
Performance and characteristic wise , they are at par in the very list , otherwise they are beaten in nearly every aspect of comparison ...

The only thing wanting , as with most chinese phones , is the software


But that will be solved as the XDA guys get hold of this phone ....


Right now android v7.0 isn't doing so well twofold - the inherent bugs in nougat v7.0 and the bugs in the stock in porting nougart.

The second version of MM is a better OS ..


But as I said , xda is around the corner ...

....and the camera. The rear camera is absolutely abysmal. Even with all the different camera apps I have tried (including Samsung camera apps). NFC & Gyro would lo be nice.

Otherwise a great phone. Just ditched my Samsung in favour of the P2. would be good to try the P6 to see if the camera is an improvement.

d8smt wrote:

....and the camera. The rear camera is absolutely abysmal. Even with all the different camera apps I have tried (including Samsung camera apps). NFC & Gyro would lo be nice.

Otherwise a great phone. Just ditched my Samsung in favour of the P2. would be good to try the P6 to see if the camera is an improvement.

I have found it takes time to get the best out of the camera. It's certainly not the same as the Nexus 6p, but I'm not particularly unimpressed with it

d8smt wrote:

....and the camera. The rear camera is absolutely abysmal. Even with all the different camera apps I have tried (including Samsung camera apps). NFC & Gyro would lo be nice.

Otherwise a great phone. Just ditched my Samsung in favour of the P2. would be good to try the P6 to see if the camera is an improvement.

The camera specs actually better than the high end phones - and that's why I bought the bvp2 - that and the battery.

But the camera software , just like the rest of the software on Chinese phones, is wanting. This involves mostly the camera driver. If that is badly written then it doesn't matter what camera app you have or what camera specs you have - your pictures will be bad.

I also have another Chinese low end phone (jiayu s3).
On lineageOS the camera is really bad but on Resurrection remix , it's perfect.

So untill the xda guys pick up this phone and start working on it, you have to settle with less than the Maximum output of the phone camera.

I compared the photos on the P2 with some on my previous Samsung S5 & Lumia 830. Even by using different camera apps, the P2 was way below even the standard of the Lumia (which had the best colour reproduction). You can see my review here with examples of all the pictures:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-re ... B06X93K74K

I don't disagree that it's probably a driver issue. But is is a real problem for a lot of people who are buying the phone & then returning it because of the poor camera. & I don't think XDA will come up with anything, since it's reasonably close to Stock anyway & I can't see the volume of sales for P2 that would get them enthused to do so.

I downloaded and used Open Camera yesterday - there is a significant difference between using the camera using this app and the original app - it may be better software post taking the picture, but both stills, videos and zoom was much better.

d8smt wrote:

I compared the photos on the P2 with some on my previous Samsung S5 & Lumia 830. Even by using different camera apps, the P2 was way below even the standard of the Lumia (which had the best colour reproduction). You can see my review here with examples of all the pictures:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-re ... B06X93K74K

I don't disagree that it's probably a driver issue. But is is a real problem for a lot of people who are buying the phone & then returning it because of the poor camera. & I don't think XDA will come up with anything, since it's reasonably close to Stock anyway & I can't see the volume of sales for P2 that would get them enthused to do so.

Answering your review:
----------------------

1)The gold theme disappears completely with Nova Lauancher

2) This phone as all chinese phones suffers from bad software. So most of the problems you are talking about are really because of the software.

3) The sound issue -thats a software issue. The original MM on the phone is bad. The updated MM is much better. The Nougart version is the worst.

4) Same with buetooth

5) same with the camera. The updated MM is better. Nougart is bad. In fact I went back to MM. Nougart was unusable.


And whay are you expecting samsung apps to work on a non samsung phone ? Samsung tries not to make its app not work on any otyher phone.

Every app that you tried on the camera phone will not produce very good results because the drivers are not well written. You should know this since you are the tech , or so you say ...

xda developers will make better custom ROMs and you will be able to utilize the full strength of the camera app.

While phones like samsung come with a nearly perfectly working ROM , the chinese phones come with a nearly NOT working ROM. You have to wait for xda developers to do their work. I nearly threw away my jiayu s3 when I first bought it with the stock ROM . It was useless. but now with the custom ROMs from xda its excellent.

6) You are the tech and you don't consider the screen technology when it comes to picture display ? P2 uses IPS LCD and Samsung uses Super Amoled . Amoled has more vivid colors and the only way to really compare pictures taken from and IPS and and AMOLED screen are on a PC / Mac. Amoled will give a false higher quality that is not reciprocated on the computer.

The screen resolution is also very important.
So the comparison you are doing does not hold water

7) The pictures you posted here - they are equally bad . I can't even tell the P2 from the samsung pics ..


===========================
"& I don't think XDA will come up with anything, since it's reasonably close to Stock anyway "

Then you don't know xda !!!

Those guys make wonders !!!

I have never been satisfied with these low end chinese phone ROMs - e.g P2 , jiayu s3 etc . As I said above i neary returned my jiayu s3 for poor sound quality and for low sound volume when making phone calls ...

But when xda stepped in with their custom ROMS those problems disappered and the phone is excellent.

For a tech guy , you don't seam to have much contact/knowledge about custom ROMS , or coding for those custom ROMs. You are complaining about samsung apps on non samsung phones - thats a layman's complaint.

And your reasoning above why xda will not come up with anything is really lame .


"& I can't see the volume of sales for P2 that would get them enthused to do so."
"

I see the exact opposite...
The 6000mah battery is an attractive reason and the camera specs.

It has one an image sensor on the bigger side compared to other phones. It uses the newer ISOcell with back lighting technology and it has digital image stabilization , HDR , etc
Thats a great camera phone if you have the right drivers...

In response:


1)The gold theme disappears completely with Nova Lauancher
---> No it doesn't. Not completely. Look at the settings & icons, for example.

2) The sound issue -thats a software issue.
---> so, as a tech, how do you explain that being software? If I switch headphones from Blackview brand to another, the problem moves with the cables. And there isn't any software in the headphones themselves. Therefore they have to be wired up differently for the channels to move (in the P2 supplied headphones).


3) And whay are you expecting samsung apps to work on a non samsung phone ? Samsung tries not to make its app not work on any otyher phone.
---> I'm not. I thought I'd try the appropriate driver just to see if it worked. It didn't.

4) xda developers will make better custom ROMs and you will be able to utilize the full strength of the camera app.
While phones like samsung come with a nearly perfectly working ROM , the chinese phones come with a nearly NOT working ROM. You have to wait for xda developers to do their work. I nearly threw away my jiayu s3 when I first bought it with the stock ROM . It was useless. but now with the custom ROMs from xda its excellent.
---> For geeks, this may be fine. for the vast majority of consumers out there, they wouldn't want to play about with custom ROMs. WHy should they? Most people buy a phone for an experience "out of the box". Think about the bigger commercial picture. THat's why iPhones are so popular, despite their tech being way behind everything else. They - and I - want a product that works out of the box. If you want to customise it later and invalidate your warranty - then fine. But that's not the point.

5) You are the tech and you don't consider the screen technology when it comes to picture display ? P2 uses IPS LCD and Samsung uses Super Amoled . Amoled has more vivid colors and the only way to really compare pictures taken from and IPS and and AMOLED screen are on a PC / Mac. Amoled will give a false higher quality that is not reciprocated on the computer. The screen resolution is also very important.So the comparison you are doing does not hold water
---> I've no idea what your point is here. The screen has nothing to do with the quality of picture taken. The only thing that influences it is with the camera tech behind the camera hardware/FW, lens specification, the driver, and to a lesser extent the app that is used. So if you compare pictures from 3 different phones, on a computer (e.g. a PC or a Mac), with identical hardware, program & screen technology, it is the raw image file that matters from each of the phone cameras. Nothing to do with the IPS or AMOLED screen of the phone.

7) The pictures you posted here - they are equally bad . I can't even tell the P2 from the samsung pics ..
---> That's because Amazon reduces the sizes. I still have the originals if you can find a way of posting them on here.........