Blackview BV5800 Pro rugged smartphone

The rugged phone category is booming and challenger brands from China are capitalising on the trend with a surprising array of affordable and durable options. Blackview currently offers eleven rugged handsets with the BV5800 Pro being one of its more affordable models at around £146 (US$190, AU$261). Even so, it’s construction is one of the toughest we have come across it comes loaded with features that could help anyone who works outdoors. 

Ruggedised phones usually command a premium because of their build quality and niche nature, but the Blackview BV5800 Pro manages to tick all of the boxes in the rugged phone category. In other words, it has a big screen, big battery, big polycarbonate body and modest processing power. In running the latest version of Android, it offers all of your favourite apps, but adds other features that could be particularly useful to outdoor workers, such as fast wireless charging and press-to-talk calling (PTT).

Design

Like most rugged phones, the Blackview BV5800 Pro is considerably chunkier and heavier than a fashion phone of the same screen size. Some might describe it as clumsy, if not downright ugly, but all that polycarbonate, rubber and metal serves its purpose. The 5.5-inch Gorilla Glass screen is surrounded by enough of a bezel to survive a 1.6-meter drop onto a hard surface and withstand submersion in 1.5-meters of water for two hours. The textured rubber back also gives you a better grip in wet conditions and a metal panel surrounds the dual front camera torch and fingerprint sensor. If you like the rugged look of the BV5800, you’ll be pleased to know that it comes in three colours, camouflage green (as pictured), high-viz yellow, or plain black. 

The layout of the Blackview BV5800 Pro is similar to many other Android handsets with no hard buttons  on the front, volume and power buttons on the sides and access ports for a 3.5mm headphone jack and micro USB port at the top and bottom. Frustratingly, because of the thickness of the casing, both of these sockets are deeply set, which means not all microUSB cables, or headphone swill reach inside. So don’t loose the ones that come bundled in the box!

There’s an additional function button on the side that could prove useful when you’re out in the wild. When you press it a curt message pops up to tell you that the software you need is not installed, so we downloaded Zello, which effectively lets you call key contacts without having to unlock the phone or navigate the onscreen menu, which is great if you’re wearing gloves. The SIM card slot can take two micro SIM cards and a micoSD memory card. 

Specifications

For what you might call a budget handset, the Blackview BV5800 Pro packs a lot of features, particularly those that could be considered useful to people who work outside or in industries where a phone could get damaged. It is water, dust and shock resistant, as mentioned, but it also offers wireless charging so you don’t need to faff about with USB cables and the battery itself is large enough, at 5580mAh, to last for 38 days on standby, or 40 hours of talk time. Unfortunately the wireless charger isn’t included, but there are plenty of other inbuilt features that could be useful outdoors, like a powerful LED torch, stereo speakers, dual cameras (13MP), dual 4G SIM card slots and NFC connectivity.  

The 5.5-inch screen is protected by Gorilla Glass 3 and though it is less bright and lower resolution than the best phones, it doesn’t look compromised. It is only a pity the screen doesn’t automatically brighten in sunlight where the phone is likely to be used a lot. 

The 13MP Sony camera takes sharp shots in full light and acceptable shots in the dark and includes a second depth of field sub camera. This is good for adding a bokeh effect, but note that it will not give you an optical zoom, like the dual-lens iPhone, which would have been far more useful. 

The ARM processor is fine for a budget phone and 2GB seems adequate given that this handset is designed for long battery life as opposed to fast gaming. It certainly runs the latest version of Android (Oreo 8.1) very smoothly and it looks rather good with Blackview’s skin over the top. 

In use

Because of its tactile rubberised casing Blackview BV5800 Pro is a pleasure to use and it feels as though it would survive well in the wild. It is obviously designed to survive the scrapes, dirt and water you’d find on a building site, but it is also easier to use than your average handset when you’re wearing gloves, or up a ladder.  For example, you can configure the PTT function button so that with one press and a tap, you are talking to a colleague. Inbuilt face recognition software also allows you to clear the phone’s security without having to take your gloves off. 

The inbuilt speakers are quite loud, making it possible to listen outdoors and having two SIM slots made it simple to combine our work and personal accounts in one device. The Blackview BV5800 Pro came with a suite of apps called Outdoor Toolbox, which includes things like a virtual plumbline, a bubble level and compass, which all worked very well on the building site. 

The SOS call is also easy to invoke without removing gloves, because it is just a long press of the function button, but thankfully, it’s not so easy that you might call out the rescue services by accident. It’s a pity there isn’t one more hard function button to which you could assign the camera, and/or torch. 

The screen can be hard to see in the full glare of the sun because it is not the brightest. At 720x1440, it’s not the sharpest screen either, but this really isn’t an issue. We were very happy with the processing speed too and didn’t experience any freezing, or crashing. At least, not until we tried playing a graphics-heavy game. Asphat 8, for example looked juddery and we wouldn’t recommend 3D gaming on this handset, which didn’t perform well in any of our benchmarks tests. 

However, the priority here is battery life and value for money, over pure processor speed so we won’t mark the Blackview BV5800 Pro down for its poor gaming performance. Overall, it performed well in the field and though it feels very heavy and lacks useful features like an optical zoom, its lack of processing power and screen resolution was not a problem.  

Final verdict

To justify its existence, a rugged phone has to prove that it’s more useful than a regular phone in a tough case. After all, a case can be taken off when you get back to your desk, whereas a tough phone is always cumbersome. The Blackview BV5800 Pro manages this in a few ways. Firstly, the battery is larger than usual and this is a real advantage when you’re outdoors all day. Plus it charges quickly (in 2.5 hours) and wirelessly if you buy the charger too. There’s a metal button to press to make a PTT call without navigating the on screen menu and stereo speakers loud enough to hear outside. There’s face recognition for unlocking your phone without taking your gloves off too and with Android Oreo onboard, there are plenty of apps to download that can help you with whatever your outdoor job might be. 

It’s a pity there isn’t another external function button to assign to whatever app you use the most and an optical zoom would have been great. A little more processing power would be welcome too, but we can’t complain about the speed of everyday apps like Google Maps, which worked well. At this price, it must be tempting for employers to issue reliable phones like this employees that work outdoors, or in adverse conditions.  

• We've also highlighted the best rugged phones of 2018 in this roundup