Monsters from Asia: The $149 BLU Studio Energy with its insane, 5,000 mAh battery

Based on the aptly-named Gionee Marathon M3, the Studio Energy has two highly enticing selling points. First, it costs just $149 on Amazon US, and second – it features an insanely large, 5,000 mAh battery that made the phone the absolute record holder in our battery life benchmark as of this writing, with a time of almost fifteen hours. This makes BLU's claim of 96 hours of "standard usage" and 45 days of standby believable, and the inclusion of a special reverse charging cable in the box – logical.

But that's not all there is to the Studio Energy, though admittedly, it is its highlight. Considering its affordable price tag, the rest of the specs don't sound too shabby – we're looking at a 5-inch, 720 x 1280 resolution IPS display with a Gorilla Glass 3 cover, a quad-core MediaTek MT6582 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8 gigs of storage (expandable through microSD), an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a 2-megapixel selfie snapper. The phone is outfitted with the usual connectivity features sans LTE – 3G HSPA support (21 Mbps), Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, and even FM radio. The Studio Energy runs a build of Android 4.4 KitKat, but BLU has promised an upgrade to Lollipop down the line.

You can grab a unit from right here.