Last month it was discovered that many BLU smartphones sold in the United States came with a third-party software pre-installed that sends personal data to servers in China.
A security contractor found a backdoor in some Android smartphones that would allow a Chinese company to monitor users’ phone calls, messages, calendar events, and location.
Although the issue was discovered on a couple of BLU models, hundreds of thousands of smartphones were supposedly affected by the exploit. In the meantime, the US-based company issued a fix that removed the third-party application from its smartphones.
BLU also issued an official statement claiming that it didn’t know about the third-party software and that it specifically asked the Chinese company that created it not to put it on its phones. Sadly, the Chinese software company went rogue and pre-installed the third-party app anyway, BLU stated.
BLU Products is mostly known for its very cheap smartphones that it sells in the United States and some other countries in Latin and South America.
Fast forward a few weeks and BLU has resumed sales of its amazingly cheap Android smartphones in the United States. The BLU R1 HD is now an Amazon Prime Exclusive smartphone and sells for just $59.99 outright.
For that price, customers will get an entry-level smartphone powered by a quad-core MediaTek MT6735 processor, coupled with 1GB of RAM and 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory expandable via microSD card. A cheaper version with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage is available for $49.99.
BLU R1 HD sports a 5-inch display that supports HD (720p) resolution and features Corning Gorilla Glass 3 coating. The phone comes with an 8-megapixel photo snapper on the back, and a secondary 5-megapixel camera in the front with LED flash.
BLU’s low-end smartphone ships with Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system right out of the box and is powered by a 2,500 mAh battery. Would you buy a BLU smartphone knowing that it might come with spyware?
