Just a cut-rate version of the S7
349175
I've had this phone for about a year now and really the only good things about it are its looks and the available memory. Most people can't tell that it's not an S7, so I guess that's good. But once you start using it it is easy to tell this is a cheapened version of that. The lack of a gyro means that it often will not rotate the screen at all. The camera will not focus on things that are close to it, so it is difficult to take pictures of checks or documents. My previous phone was a HTC 816 that was better in every way except for the memory, and I would recommend that over this if you can live with less apps.
4898603
I try to stay on top of technology without sweating the details. I shop, I blog, and I keep up with my TLA's. (three letter acronyms)

When this phone was released, I was understandably excited. I bought the display model from CompUSA before they got it out of the box for $699 in August of 2007. (it's an N95-1, the "real" original N95)
Here's what I've figured out since then:

1: You MUST have faith in Nokia and flash the firmware as it gets released (but not when it's still beta). Every time I do, I find new bells and whistles that I didn't have before.

2: I have T-mobile service with the $4.99 t-zones plan which is supposed to include POP/IMAP/SMTP email capabilities. This works great... and so does the FULL http internet!! After much research, I've concluded that only Symbian phones are exempt from the proprietary blocking that WinMo, Mac, and Crackberry users are constrained to. That means you get the $40 internet capability for $35 less than the next guy. Multiply that by 12 and your phone is paid for. Do the math.

3: No other Phone OS comes close to Symbian. It is, however, turning into more of a fanatical club lately, like the dorky Linux club and Apple marketing suckas club. Once you're in the club, you're a lifer. I would be in a bad place if I had to go back to the chalkboard and learn to run my life using a different platform, mostly because the competition simply cannot do what I have come to expect out of a phone.

4: Components vs convergence. When you're "decorating" the living room, you shouldn't buy the $1200 home theater in a box. When your DVD laser gets dirty or wears out, you need to spend $1200 to replace the thing, and then you've got all these extra speakers, you know what I'm talking about. So why do I entrust my entire mobile device consortium to one device? Because all this stuff has to fit IN MY POCKET. I've never owned an MP3 player. I've never owned a point-and-shoot camera. I've never owned a Garmin GPS. And I rarely need to carry my laptop anywhere. It's all there, and if I had owned these devices, I could have easily sold them to pay the asking price at the time. There's no spare room in my pants for extra electronics if you know what i mean.

5: You CAN make the GPS work faithfully. After much fussing, I found myself in the Chicago Nokia "outlet" store talking to a sales rep about the issue and learned that out of the box, the phone uses GSM data to triangulate the GPS position (in addition to, or rather, PRIOR TO, using the GPS antenna) which is why people are crying endlessly about it taking 5-15 minutes to find a signal. It's right there in the user interface, it's just a little tricky to find it. You have to turn off the GSM/GPRS data location awareness and it's good to go. Now I find GPS signal in 3-15 seconds every time.

6: I carry mine with an 8GB Kingston microSDHC card inside and have never had any issues with data loss or recognition. I suspect the new 16GB will also be fine as it is the same class as the 8GB.

7: I used a PC program called "Fixtunes" to lookup my music and assign metadata/album cover art on the fly, and my phone shows the album art while it is playing... a small but worthwhile chore for any music collection.

8: Compatibiliy: For bluetooth, I have a Sony HWSBTA2W receiver for the home theater, a Scosche UBRH bluetooth receiver for my car, a Cirago BTA-6210 micro dongle for my laptop sync, and a Nokia 5310 for my Girlfriend. The only device that ever gives me a hard time is the girlfriend.
3149107
I am disappointed with this product. Despite this being a 2016 model it has poor support for the latest Samsung phones. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. The AppRadio Live app is a joke; the only 2 apps it supports are a poor navigation map and a media hub that can't find any of my music on the phone. That means no Waze and no Pandora despite the marketing hype. I also hate having to change my phone's keyboard to the AppRadio keyboard. When my S7 is plugged into the unit's rear-mounted USB(?!) the AVH screen scrambles and nothing works. Bluetooth pairs easily but hands-free phone calls do not work. The phonebook appears but selecting an entry is hit or miss, mostly miss; you'll likely end up calling the wrong person. Nevertheless, the answering party can't hear or be heard. I learned too late that Marshmallow is just too new for this Pioneer unit.

Despite the ample screen real estate the functional layout feels cluttered and confusing. It would help if I could customize that main screen to my liking; I would very much like to have a one-touch mute button on that main screen (instead of press volume+- and then click Mute), a one-touch power off (instead of the three-step AV > Power > confirm), and relocate the phone icon to the left driver side.

On the plus side, the HD Radio is great. My area is rich with digital stations and many of them are ad-free, a welcome change from noisy Top-40. DVD playback will also be nice for my passengers.

I will reluctantly have to look into returning this. There are just too many problems for newest Android phones!

UPDATE: The latest update (Android Nougat) for the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge has improved connectivity. Bluetooth is working better, music is readable and playable, screen is no longer scrambled. Even Waze has returned! Only the speaker phone still does not work. Adding one star. Fix the speaker phone and it goes up to four stars; give me simple on-screen mute and power buttons and I'll give it five stars.
2225352
Went from a Galaxy S3 to a Samsung J7.
I was a bit skeptical until I did some research, and found it to get pretty high marks from some reputable sources, as well as favorable reviews all around.
After using for a few days, I gotta say, it's pretty decent. Price ($150), large screen 5.5, (around the size of a Galaxy Note), speed, great battery life, and multi-tasking are the pro's. The camera is hit or miss, although it does feature a 13mp main camera and a 5mp selfie camera with a flash, I find the images to be a bit lacking and the colors not true, the display doesn't like the color red, and the speaker is a bit muddy. Also, this unit only offers 16 gigs of storage. By the time you factor in the operating system, and the bloatware that is installed, you'll be left with 7-8 gigs to work with. You CAN expand the memory to 256 gigs with a mini- SD card, but cannot move apps to it.
Overall, this a great and affordable phone for your kid or maybe a cost-effective replacement if you dunk yours. Not quite a flagship phone but feels like it.
3693704
I have had this phone for one year. Numerous problems. It has low internal memory; after hardware it has about .75 GB of room for apps/photos/messages, so a micro-SD is a must. However, many apps cannot be put onto the micro-SD so you will not be able to have many apps. The photo quality is not great; I knew it would be bad but mine was worse than expected with most photos very grainy. NO CASES ARE AVAILABLE FOR THIS PHONE due to its scarcity on the market. Had to do a factory reset once to fix a software glitch where apps could not be installed even if there was space on the device. Charging port broke after .75 years of use, had to be taken apart and bent back in shape. Charging cord fits poorly. Headphones that come included work with no other devices. Driver device software never installs properly, so the phone can't connect to a PC. The micro-SD sometimes unseats itself. I am changing phones after 3/4 year because the battery manager is broken leading to a dead phone. The screen brightness is calibrated poorly and does not have much range. The phone has maps and GPS tracking software, but IT DOES NOT HAVE A GPS IN IT. You will not be able to use any sort of navigation. Sound quality on calls is a little quiet, but forget about speakerphone as neither the speaker nor the microphone can be used effectively to this extent. Absolutely 0 tech support.

Otherwise, the phone is great! Can send pics, group messages, etc. Unlocked phone is nice, can switch carriers. Supported by AT&T. The browser works very well, and the touch screen is very responsive. Buttons haven't broken on me, and I've been hard on them. You could do a lot worse for a $100 phone.
1039439
After owning a Blackberry Curve for 3 years I upgraded to the Virgin Mobile Samsung Galaxy Victory. Initially I was very happy with the phone. It was was very quick and responsive, the screen looked great, it supported plenty of apps, etc. However, now 1 year later I find myself replacing it. It is no longer quick and responsive (opening a text message takes 5-10 seconds, sometimes more) and it freezes/randomly reboots itself a couple times a week. The biggest problem though is it's lack of internal memory; only 1.4 gb usable. Even with a SD card to store all my pictures, music and video the remaining internal memory is not enough for all the apps I would like to have. I don't even have any games on my phone, just news, social media, map, a run tracker and a few others and the memory is full. At this point I cannot even update the apps I have, let alone download new ones.

One year ago I purchased this phone for $190. It now sells for $75, which seems more appropriate. If you're just looking for a simple smart phone and you don't plan on using many apps, you would probably be happy with this phone.
3036013
This phone is great for its size and design but not much else...I chose this phone for its size because it was not as oversized as the Galaxy S6. From a design perspective and size the phone is great especially if you like a smaller phone. The drawbacks are that the processor and battery life are not as good as the galaxy 6. There is noticeable delay when switching between apps and my experience with battery life is only 8 hours on a single charge. Only choose this phone if your top criteria is a smaller form factor. If you want battery life and speed then choose the galaxy S6
1211415
Samsung's Galaxy S7 Edge is without question the most gorgeous cell phone out.  But that is as far as it goes in my opinion.  After all, smartphones are mostly about functionality.  Face it, these are handheld computers.  Many if not most of us have come to depend on our smartphone to live our personal lives by.  My brother has always had the most current Galaxy phone and im not sure if he's ever tried anything else.  I am a retired AT&T service rep and for 29 yrs, phones were my business.  I have used Motorola and HTC but mostly LG.  I had a problem with my latest LG G4 overheating and not holding charge.  It was replaced 4 times and eventually AT&T agreed to replace it with a different model.  I was left with a few choices, since it was a warranty replacement, none of them being an LG phone. I chose the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge because I thought it would be the best of the few that I was offered.  I HATE IT!!  I have felt for a while that Samsung, being super rich and powerful in the cell phone arena, has stacked the reviews against LG.  There is literally no comparison in these phones.  LG G series and V series phones are far above Samsung in a number of ways.  LG phones work much more proficiently.  Their menus are much more organized and have many more options to customize and personalize your phone.  I do not believe I will adjust to the Galaxy S7 and learn to like it because it is sluggish with lots of stuff in it but functioning often with no rhyme nor reason.  One important app that I used on LG phones to make custom personalized ringtones and notification tones will not work on the S7 Edge.  The music player is cumbersome and got too much junk that I don't like or want.  I will have to deal with this phone for at least 6 months of the remaining contract  before I can get another LG phone.  I have no beef or personal vendetta against Samsung but this is just my most honest and sincere experience with these phones.
2284401
Some quick background on why I purchased this phone in September 2015, I needed to replace a broken Sony Xperia Z1S, and wanted to avoid having another monthly equipment payment on my T-Mobile bill. Moving from a medium-high tier phone to the BLU 4.0 reveals how far we've come, but for the price of this phone the gap in advancements is quite understandable.

I'll address the phone as a sum of its parts:

-Storage: As others mentioned, you will likely run out of space on the internal storage, it only displays 1.26 GB for me so that's pretty deceitful. Move as many apps/pictures to external storage as you can to alleviate this.
-Speed: The phone is slow, but it's still bearable. It struggles with multi-tasking, so if you're installing an app you'll find you'll probably have to wait for it to finish. I turned on developers mode and turned off animation scaling, not sure if it helped greatly.
-Touch: Due to the speed mentioned above the phone's touch response is poor at times. Swyping sometimes results in a broken word. This isn't always the case but I found hitting backspace just doesn't register all the time.
-Light sensor: Auto-brightness does not appear work. There seem to be two sensors in the front... maybe it's a software issue?
-Screen: You can't expect an OLED display for the price, at certain angles the display will wash out too. You could still watch a YouTube video or read a book though.
-Camera: All things considered it's not terrible. It does not auto-focus which I've grown pretty used to with modern phones.
-SIM Card mount: Special mention... this is kind of mixed blessing, it's great because it looks to support a myriad of SIM sizes based on the slot. I have a T-Mobile SIM and had to align it in the middle of the slot (with free space on both sides of the card), dropping the phone could shift the card around and stop service. I may cut an old credit card up to create a makeshift cradle if it becomes a problem, but it hasn't yet.
-Other Considerations: If you're coming from a newer phone you'll lose 802.11n WiFi (which is new, in all fairness) and NFC capabilities. The phone says it's using 4G but I haven't done a speed test to check.

In summary, the phone is mediocre, but still 4 stars given the price. I suspect that 4 years ago it would have been fine. If the price weren't a factor and you're coming from a Samsung S3 or higher generation you'll probably find the phone a huge step down.

Update (2 months later): I've ran into issues on the internal storage, you will run out of space to install apps as not every app supports being moved to external. The battery life is actually pretty amazing, I'm at 60% with 16h of use. I think that the older Bluetooth version is quite inefficient on the battery though. I also updated the light sensor above, it does work to shut the screen off.
2915149
The phone itself is fine. It's a basic (not "smart") phone that will make and receive calls and text messages like a champ. It has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a headphone jack (so you can use it as a music player), and a port on the outside that will accept a microSD card (for example, to store said music). You probably won't want to use it much for surfing the web or taking a lot of pictures, although it does have a built-in web browser and a 2 megapixel camera. I bought this phone to replace my old Samsung Intensity (the first model), and this is definitely a better phone. It's got a bigger screen than the Intensity, and the text is easier to read.

The reason I gave it only 2 stars is particular to this phone. I bought it used, and, for the second time since I bought it, I've taken it out of my pocket and found that it suddenly won't turn on, even though the battery was fully charged. The last time this happened, it inexplicably came back to life after I connected it to the charger for a while and then took out the battery and put it back in.

So it looks like I spent $20 and got a dud. Buying used, you pay your money and take your chances.

EDIT: The solution was to cut up a business card so that it fit into the battery compartment, place it below the battery, and snap everything back together. It hasn't had that problem since. Apparently this is also a common problem (and solution) for people with smartphones. Updating to 4 stars.
239830
So I bought this phone because my Galaxy S3 decided to crash on me three months before I am due for an upgrade.  I have had this phone for four days now so I may do another update to this review later.  There are a few good things about the phone that I do like.  I do like the Windows tiles.  They make things easy to navigate.  The phone itself is pretty easy to figure out.  I have only had droids in the past and I was able to figure everything out pretty quickly.  I had AT&T before and the phone recognized my sim card right away.  There are a few things about the phone that I don't like.  I can't seem to change the keyboard style.  I use patterns for my passwords.  For example, I may use the letter S pattern starting at the number 5 on a standard keyboard.  The keyboard on the phone is not like a standard keyboard so now I have to remember the letters and numbers for my passwords instead of just the pattern for the letter S starting at the number 5 on a standard keyboard.  This is not a show stopper but somewhat annoying to me.  With my S3 I could change the keyboard to several different types.  There is no expandable memory.  Again, this is not a show stopper since I will only use this phone until I can get the S5, but still you would think that HTC would have built this feature into the phone.  The battery life is very short if you use the phone.  I had to recharge the phone about halfway through the day with moderate use and you cant buy an extended battery.  This is a pain.  I had an expanded battery for my S3 and I could go a couple of days without having to charge it if I needed to.  I will be chained to my charger for the foreseeable future, oh well.
Ok, I can deal with all of that, but my biggest problem with the phone is there is no Amazon cloud player app.  My wife, and two teenagers share the same taste in music and we use one account for all of our music and reading.  Everyone in the family buys music and books from Amazon and we all have access to it (I pay for everything  LOL).  Anyway, now I have to sign up with X-box music and I don't have access to Amazon's cloud player.  This is a show stopper for me and even if I loved everything else about the phone, I would not be able to continue with a Windows phone for this reason.  Hopefully they will make an App for Amazon's cloud player.
There is one last thing that I can think of that bothers me about the phone.  I did download Amazon's kindle and it works flawlessly with this phone, but I cannot make the words bigger.  I can make them bigger, but not big enough for me to still read without glasses.  With my S3, I could make the words very big.  This is a minor annoyance really because I am always leaving my glasses at work because I never really need them at home.
Oh, there is one more thing that is irritating.  When watching videos, you cannot move the progress bar to the part of the video you want to watch, you have to click the fast forward button a number of times until you get to where you want to be.  This is very annoying.  My son did find a YouTube app that will let you have access to a progress bar, so there is a workaround for this problem at least for YouTube videos.

In summary, this phone will work for now.  I can do basic texting, e-mail, and Internet surfing, but I can't wait to get back to a Galaxy phone.
661455
I had this phone for almost a year. Phone performs perfect as a phone. As an intertainment device is rather dull. Speaker sound is mediocre. Camera quality is low, similar to iPhone. I replaced it with Nokia E71 this January - definetely an improvement. Though most of functionality of E71 exists on this phone and it is smaller and a lot cheaper!
1099600
Much better phones are available for the money. Nothing revolutionary except Apple knocking 50 bucks off the price and using cheaper production methods, if you call that progress. I feel sorry for people who think Apple has a grasp on the future. iOS7 also looks a bunch like windows 98 in my opinion. Don't tell an Apple fan that, they will flip out. Safari feels slower than ever, animations lag. It feels cheap, it looks cheap, total bust.
4606447
Not better than and s2 mini or S3. Works as good as expected but way too much money for a phone that could be compared with the old s3 mini or s3
2151848
I bought this for my wife to use as HER dedicated media consumption device.  I did considerable research on the newer, state-of-the-art 7 inch tablets.  Here is some of my thinking:
-  We have an iPad that was originally hers and which she uses to read her magazines, but which is too big to be conveniently carried on trips (and which is often being used by the kids). The new 7" Ipad is a lot more expensive, and Apple's closed system tyranny and draconian forced-obsolescence-by-sneaky-forced-upgrades-that-screw-things-up pisses me off, so I focused on Android tablets.
-  We also have a Kindle Fire that she also reads her magazines on, but that is also used by the kids for reading their school books.  Since the Kindle Fire is also based on an Android OS and there is no problem accessing her magazines on it, I never considered that there might be a problem getting the magazines on a new tablet.
I chose the Samsung 7" Galaxy Tab2 because, of all the 7" Android tablets, only this Samsung device provided for memory expansion.
I am saddened because the 7" Tab-2 is a beautiful device, and it seems to work well for a lot of purposes, but to my horror, it is not possible to load any of my wife's favorite magazines (including Allure, InStyle, and a number of cooking magazines.)  Some of these magazines are in fact available for purchase from the Samsung's magazine aggregator of choice, but they would require that my wife repurchase all of the subscriptions she already owns (they don't have a way to port over existing subscriptions, apparently).  Repurchasing all of these subscriptions would more than double the price of the tablet itself.
Perhaps it is not entirely the fault of this tablet, so I will concede that the one-star rating may be somewhat harsh.  But I am pissed off that Samsung, Google, Amazon, Zinio, and the like, seem to be more interested in building their own fiefdoms and locking consumers into their own proprietary markets.

This is not the "open" environment I was led to expect.  Companies please take note:  Holding your customers hostage is not a good long-term strategy!
2711744
For the same price as the Nexus 4, you get a phone that's twice as good. I'm not kidding. I've had this piece of crap Nexus 4 for 8 months now, and I expected the BLU to only be an incremental step up (purchased it as a gift for a friend overseas). Turns out it isn't only 10x the phone this Nexus 4 is, it's also visibly better than almost every Android phone on the market. It doesn't have all the crapware most phone manufacturers put on their phones. They have the same speed as the Samsung Galaxy S3  (Samsungs really have some of the worst build quality out there), and in the comparison I've done, there is no noticeable difference between the Samsung Galaxy S4 and this phone. The SGS4 has a better screen, sure, but it's also more than twice the price and build like a sad toy.

All in all, for this price you can't beat this phone. For $600...just by this phone and then BLU's new phone in 6 months.

BLU may be a hidden gem in the cell phone industry, but I'm glad for it. Keeps the prices down for me. I'll be eagerly awaiting their next phone and definitely be staying away from the Nexus series, they're not built like they used to be.
2405914
There are couple bad things of this Alcatel One Touch Fierce 7024W.
1), the color of the LCD screen is very inaccurate. The white color looks light-blue. And, the screen is hard to see outdoors.
2), both the rear/front cameras are fixed focus. It always takes blurry images for most the cases. For example, if you want to take a photo of a check, and then deposit it electronically by uploading the photo to your bank. Forget about this model.
3), the total internal memory is only 4GB. After the OS and Apps, it may only have 500MB for your own files. Well, if you only use it as a phone, doing text, emailing, online accounts, watch stream videos like YouTube, and use as GPS on Google Maps, it will be just fine. (however, if you want to store your own files like songs, images, movies, then you need plug in a micro-SD card and store them there. The phone's own left-over space is really too small.)
And the minor bad: no NFC, not removable battery (which implies when the battery goes bad in 2 years, the phone will go bad with it).
Other than above, it is a low-budget fast enough Quad-core 1.2GHz smartphone with 4G (HSPA+, around 6M download speed. It is not LTE), and very good to use everyday. It does not have any add-on and you will experience the very original Android v4.2.2. You can't expect to have everything great for this low budget phone, but it really gives you the high value for the price you paid.

In addition, with T-Mobile WiFi Calling feature built-in that, for example, if you are in foreign country, you can use WiFi Calling that can call or receive just as you were in States without any roaming fee. And, it also allows you do tethering that it can work as a hotspot to share its internet to other WiFi laptop or tablet.

======== UPDATE
T-Mobile announced (2014 August) the newer "Alcatel One Touch Fierce 2" which just cost $20 more that gives you a 5 inch screen, auto focus rear camera, and Android v4.4, which should be a lot more worthwhile than this model.