Review Summary
Expert Rating
Lava is going all guns blazing with the Agni 3, a smartphone priced competitively from Rs 20,999, boasting features rarely seen in this segment. With dual screens, an Action Key, a telephoto lens, a new chipset, and streamlined software, the Agni 3 stands out with key innovations. Can these innovations overpower its competitors, which include the Nothing Phone (2a), Realme P2 Pro, and Motorola Edge 50 Fusion— all highly capable smartphones for their price? Read this in-depth Lava Agni 3 review to find out.
Table of Contents
Verdict
The Lava Agni 3 stands out for its innovative features, with the secondary screen and action key button serving as true game changers. Alongside, the phone provides reliable everyday performance, a clean, bloat-free UI, a satisfying viewing experience, and respectable battery life. However, the Lava Agni 3’s cameras may leave you wanting more.
Design and display displays
The Lava Agni 3 features a design similar to many other smartphones, yet it manages to stand out thanks to its unique Action Key and InstaScreen features. Inspired by the iPhone, Lava has introduced a third button, which is placed alongside the volume and power keys. Called the Action Key, it’s dedicated to quick actions / controls. The Agni 3’s Action Key can be customised to a bunch of shortcuts like capturing screenshots, flash, SOS, recording, and toggling between silent/ ring modes, which can be mapped to a single click, double clicks, and long press. This enhances the device’s usability by providing faster, more convenient access to key functions compared to gesture-based or accessibility features. Seeing other OEMs adopt a similar action button in their designs would be great.
| Thickness | Weight | IP Rating | |
| Lava Agni 3 | 8.8mm | 212 grams | IP64 |
| Realme P2 Pro | 8.21mm | 180 grams | IP65 |
| Motorola Edge 50 Fusion | 7.9mm | 174.9 grams | IP68 |
| Nothing Phone (2a) | 8.5mm | 190 grams | IP54 |
The InstaScreen is a secondary screen positioned alongside the triple cameras on the rear panel of the Lava Agni 3. It is a 1.74-inch AMOLED touchscreen display, which offers similar functionality as the cover screen of a flip smartphone. However, due to its small size, the controls and usability are limited. The screen supports only seven preset widgets, namely camera, music player, stopwatch, recorder, alarm, timer, and health. Among these, the camera widget stands out as particularly useful, functioning as a viewfinder for capturing selfies, portraits, and videos with the rear camera.
While filters can be applied on the InstaScreen, users must switch to the main 6.78-inch display to view the results, revealing a key limitation of the display. Moreover, unlike flip/ fold smartphones, the handset lacks a continuity feature, which allows users to seamlessly transition between the screens and continue their tasks without interruptions. Users must unlock the smartphone and manually launch the gallery/photos app to view images on the Agni 3, which can be frustrating at times. Furthermore, the primary lock screen settings do not extend to the secondary screen, which has its own separate lock feature that is less than ideal for the user experience.
That said, locking the screen won’t be necessary as it only offers at-a-glance information. This applies to notifications as well, and you’ll have to jump to the main screen to interact with them. Besides notifications, the screen alerts you for calls and charging updates. Lava has also implemented an animated virtual puppy called ‘Firey’, which engages with users with a handful of actions on the secondary screen. But, that’s that. You can neither interact with it nor change its actions. Right now the secondary screen feels slightly undercooked. If Lava can extend its use case with new widgets, continuity features, and add more abilities to Firey, it could be a real game changer for the smartphone.
| Display size | Peak brightness | |
| Lava Agni 3 | 6.74-inch and 1.74-inch AMOLED | 1200 nits |
| Realme P2 Pro | 6.77-inch AMOLED | 2000 nits |
| Motorola Edge 50 Fusion | 6.7-inch AMOLED | 1600 nits |
| Nothing Phone (2a) | 6.7-inch AMOLED | 1300 nits |
Yet, there is plenty to like about the Lava Agni 3. The design features a matte finish on the back, which effectively resists fingerprints and smudges—at least on the blue variant (called Heather Glass), which we reviewed. The phone also comes in white, with the variant labelled Pristine Glass. Both colour options feature a large, POCO-like black camera module that protrudes slightly from the surface. However, its rectangular shape ensures the phone remains stable while lying flat on surfaces, preventing wobbling.
The phone has sleek, rounded edges that seamlessly complement its curved 6.78-inch screen. The display is of the AMOLED variety and offers FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ support, and 1,200 nits peak brightness. While outdoor visibility is underwhelming, the display offers punchy and vibrant colours with deep blacks for an excellent viewing experience. The viewing angles are also impressive. The bezels might not be razor thin, but at least there were no accidental touches associated with curved screens during our usage.
The viewing experience is elevated by Dolby Atmos dual speakers, providing crisp stereo sound at 70-80 percent volume. However, a slight crackle becomes noticeable at maximum volume. While there is no 3.5mm headphone jack on the device, you get standard wireless connectivity options such as Bluetooth v5.4, Wi-Fi 6e, NavIC-based GPS, and more. Additionally, the phone boasts a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer. For security, the Lava Agni 3 offers an in-display fingerprint scanner, which unlocks the device accurately and in a jiffy.
While the device is IP64 water and dust resistance certified, it weighs slightly on the heavier side (212 grams, to be precise) which may not be comfortable for prolonged usage.
Cameras
The Lava Agni 3 boasts a triple camera setup comprising a 50MP primary unit, an 8MP ultrawide unit, and an 8MP telephoto lens. While the first two are fairly standard for the price range, the inclusion of the 8MP telephoto lens is a notable addition, offering something new for this segment. The lens offers up to 3x optical zoom and 30x digital zoom. The quality is likeable for the price, especially in well-lit environments. The lens gets the colours almost right but fails to capture finer details, preserve shadows, and maintain highlights. This has been our general observation of the Lava Agni 3 cameras.
To provide you with a clearer perspective, we have compared the camera performance of the Lava Agni 3 with that of its main competitors: the Realme P2 Pro, Nothing Phone (2a), and Motorola Edge 50 Fusion. However, before we delve into that, it’s worth noting that while the Lava smartphone has a 16MP front-facing camera, you can also use the secondary screen to take selfies from the primary rear-facing camera. The results look something like this…
The rear screen camera app captures images in a 1:1 aspect ratio by default. You can change this to 3:4 by tapping the arrow at the top of the screen. The result is more detailed and better looking than the front camera.
Daylight
The Lava Agni 3’s primary camera falls short in clarity and sharpness compared to its rivals. Competitors like the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion, Realme P2 Pro, and Nothing Phone (2a) deliver noticeably better image quality. While the Lava’s colour saturation matches the Realme P2 Pro, the latter excels with sharper details and a superior dynamic range. However, the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion stands out the most, offering oversaturated yet vibrant images likely to appeal to social media enthusiasts.
Ultrawide
The Lava Agni 3 ultrawide images also appear unappealing. The handset is nearly accurate with its colour science, but the level of detail leaves much to be desired. Unlike its competitors, which typically show distortion at the edges, this handset exhibits noticeable warping across the entire frame, further diminishing the overall image quality. While the Nothing Phone (2a) outshines all capturing those finer details in the landscape, it is the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion that delivers eye-catching images with boosted colours.
Portraits
The Lava Agni 3 and its competitors struggle with precise edge detection in portrait shots, often showing warping around the subject’s edges. However, the Realme P2 Pro delivers more appealing results, avoiding the oversaturated colours of the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion and the excessive smoothing seen in the Lava Agni 3 and Nothing Phone (2a). The Realme P2 Pro also achieves near-accurate skin tones, enhancing the overall quality of its portraits.
Selfies
The Lava Agni 3’s front-facing camera tends to overexpose images, making areas of the face exposed to sunlight look washed out, as evident in the image above. In contrast, competitors like Nothing Phone (2a) manage light more effectively, delivering superior facial details and more realistic skin tones. For those seeking better facial detail with a touch of oversaturation, the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion would be a more suitable option.
Night mode
The Lava Agni 3 captures long exposure images by default in low light, keeping the shutter open longer to gather more light. While this results in brighter images, as seen in the sample above, they tend to be much grainier compared to their competitors. The Realme P2 Pro impresses by better controlling light flare and delivering a more realistic image than the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion and Nothing Phone (2a). Though the Lava Agni 3’s brightness may appeal to some, its overall image quality falls short in comparison.
Performance and software
The Lava Agni 3 is powered by MediaTek Dimensity 7300X SoC, which is specifically designed for dual-screen phones. That said, the core specs of the SoC are pretty much the same as the regular Dimensity 7300. The Lava smartphone is available in a couple of RAM and storage variants: 8GB + 128GB and 8GB + 256GB. While the RAM is expandable up to 8GB using a portion of the phone’s storage, you should know that there is no microSD card slot available.
The Lava Agni 3’s synthetic benchmark performance is on par with other Dimensity 7300-powered smartphones. The handset achieved 6,76,483 on AnTuTu, whereas its Geekbench scores are 1,041 on the single-core and 3,239 on the multi-core tests. Moreover, the phone performs at 74.6 percent of its peak performance on the Burnout CPU Throttle test. These scores are not best in class, but they are respectable for the price. The real-world performance is also similar.
The handset is not the most powerful smartphone within the segment, but it performs seamlessly without any lags or awkward app crash/ freeze issues. The Lava Agni 3 also handles graphically demanding games like BGMI smoothly, supporting HDR graphics with an Ultra frame rate. It delivered an average frame rate of 36.12 FPS, with a temperature increase of 7.9 degrees Celsius after 30 minutes of gameplay. With Call of Duty, you can expect better FPS (54.6) with High graphics and Max frame rate settings. Real Racing 3 is better optimised for the device, offering a 107.55 and 5.6-degree Celsius increase in temperature after half an hour. This thermal efficiency ensures decent performance for most day-to-day tasks.
Software-wise, the Lava Agni 3 runs Android 14 OS out of the box. The UI is closer to stock Android, with 31 proprietary Google and Lava apps pre-installed. There are no third-party apps or ads on the device, which makes the overall experience very user-friendly. The company has ensured three years of major software and four years of security updates for the smartphone.
| Pre-installed apps | OS updates | |
| Lava Agni 3 | 31 | 3 years major + 4 years security |
| Realme P2 Pro | 64 | 2 years major + 3 years security |
| Motorola Edge 50 Fusion | 35 | 3 years major + 4 years security |
| Nothing Phone (2a) | 30 | 3 years major + 4 years security |
Battery and charging
The Lava Agni 3 packs a 5,000mAh battery, backed by a 66W fast charging solution. A compatible charger is provided in the box, which juices up the device from 20 to 100 percent in roughly 43 minutes. A full charge provided 10 hours and 20 minutes of screen time on the PCMark battery test with 20 percent juice still left in the tank. The video streaming test also yielded decent results, consuming just 4 percent of battery after half an hour on the smartphone. As for gaming, the Agni 3 battery depleted by 21 degrees on aggregate with 30 minutes of BGMI, Call of Duty, and Real Racing 3, which is slightly higher than some of its competitors.
| Charging speed | Charging time (20-100 percent) | |
| Lava Agni 3 | 66W | 43 minutes |
| Realme P2 Pro | 80W | 36 minutes |
| Motorola Edge 50 Fusion | 68W | 36 minutes |
| Nothing Phone (2a) | 45W | 56 minutes |
Final verdict
The base variant of the Lava Agni 3, with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, is priced at Rs 20,999 but comes without a charger. If you opt for the 66W in-box charger, the price rises to Rs 22,999. The top-end variant, featuring 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, is available for Rs 24,999. At these price points, alternatives like the Realme P2 Pro (review), Motorola Edge 50 Fusion (review), and Nothing Phone (2a) (review) offer better camera capabilities than the Lava Agni 3. The Nothing Phone (2a) is a better choice for power users, while camera enthusiasts might prefer the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion.
That said, the Lava Agni 3 amazes with its innovative features like the InstaScreen secondary display and customisable Action Key, which enhance usability and could set new trends. Combined with a bloat-free UI and solid everyday performance, the Agni 3 becomes a compelling option for those who value practicality and unique features.
Editor’s rating: 7.5 / 10
Reasons to buy
- The handset features a matte back finish, which effectively resists fingerprints and smudges.
- The phone boasts a secondary screen & action button, which enhances usability.
- The software is closer to stock Android with no third-party apps or ads.
- The overall performance is quite solid for regular usage.
Reasons not to buy
- The Agni 3 cameras are below average for the price.
- The outdoor visibility of the smartphone’s display is underwhelming.
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