Last week my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 started mysteriously rebooting itself throughout the day and evening. Eventually it booted up to what appeared to be the Android bootloader with the message, “Could not do normal boot ddi : mmc_read failed”. I reached out to T-Mobile and Samsung support and was advised to perform a factory reset. Unfortunately the factory reset didn’t help the problem much, the phone would still reboot a couple of times a day without warning. I suspected the eMMC flash on the phones motherboard was starting to fail. Apparently it’s a known issue with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Thankfully the phone was just under a year old so I arranged with Samsung support to return the smartphone for warranty/repair service. With the shipping and warranty service it would probably take between 7-10 business days after I shipped the smartphone before it would return. So what was I going to use in the interim. At a minimum I needed voice, texting, and email service from the device. I was just looking for something to hold me over until my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 was returned. I quickly found the BLU Advance 5.0 which was retailing for $59.99 on Amazon. I removed the SIM from my Galaxy Note 4, installed it into the BLU Advance 5.0 and I was up and running without issue. Almost one week later I must say that I’m genuinely impressed with the relatively inexpensive Android smartphone. The smartphone only has 4GB of space so you’ll need to be selective regarding the apps that you install. I’m primarily using the handset for voice, texting, email (Microsoft Outlook) and occasionally Audible and Google Maps for those long commutes. This is a great alternate Android smartphone if you are traveling or even for a teenager. It’s much easier on the pocket to lose a $60 smartphone than a $500 smartphone.

Cheers!