At my work I have a Blackberry Z10 which I totally loathe. I could not figure out how to make a phone call on it at first. So I thought lets go for a new phone that supports dual sim. I can just slot both the private and work sim cards in and don’t have to lug around two phones.

Obviously the Apple line up has no dual sim so that was out. So I was left with Android and Windows Phone as possible platforms. As a budget I just wanted to spend as little as possible since I am ok with phoning, whatsapping, emailing, news, banking and facebook for basics. 4G (LTE) would be great but not essential.

At first my choices were:

• Lumia 640
• Motorola G (second generation)
• Mii Redmi Note

All are in the 100-170 euro price range. The Motorola is only available in 3G and there is no dual sim on the latest generation (unless you are in Asia). The Mii looked very good but I had concerns about the service as it would have to be a china import. The Lumia 640 comes in at around 170 euro for the 4G model (cheaper for the 3G). I was just nosing around on Amazon.de when i noticed the Blu HD LTE which looked similar to the Lumia 640. It was just 130 euro for the 4G model and seemed to come with more accessories such as cover and screen protector. So I thought that gives me 40 euro to spend on beer extra so why not. Funny enough the Blu is not available in the Netherlands and the best way to get it is probably through Amazon.de.

So I ordered it. Since I have a Lumia 520 for backup phone and I was quite happy with that, I thought it was well worth a chance. After just three days the phone was delivered. So I unboxed it and here is what I noticed (compared to an IPhone 5s).

• The device is pretty big at 5 inches and is bigger than the IPhone 5s
• There is a cover, screen protector, earphones and usb cable in the box. No dedicated recharger.
• It has the two sim slots plus an extra slot for the micro SD card (up to 64 GB I belief)
• Front and back facing camera

Since I already have a Microsoft account I just added that when I set up the phone. Although that was a bit clunky with the sim card already in the new device, it completed without any more trouble and all my previous settings and apps were restored from the Lumia 520 backup. I managed to forget my password for the sim card of work so I will need to have that reset, so I cannot comment on the dual sim yet.

I will post some more of my experience after three months.