Lava Iris Pro 30

Not riding the “bigger is better” wave, the Lava Iris Pro 30 flaunts a 4.7-inch display making it perfect for one-handed use. The 4.7-inch screen size feels like a sweet spot for entertainment purposes such as watching movies or playing games on a mobile phone, and at the same time it doesn’t feel too large making it difficult to carry or use with a single hand. The One Glass Solution display from Sharp makes the display thin and also gives the device an all-black look when it’s in sleep mode. The HD resolution (1,280 x 720 pixels) delivers crisp images and text. It offer good viewing angles and is easily readable under direct sunlight. The display also gets a layer of protection with Corning Gorilla Glass to withstand minor scratches or knocks.

The smartphone ships with Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean with very minimal customisation. There are absolutely no changes in the home screen, app launcher and settings menu. One neat and useful feature is a widget on the notification drawer which graphically visualises important stats for the device including battery, network, CPU and memory usage. This offers at-a-glance info for these parameters, and also analyses the trend for battery to get an indication of how soon it’s going to die.

At a time when megapixel counts of smartphone cameras are straddling double figures, Lava has chosen an 8-megapixel camera sensor for the Iris Pro 30. However according to the company, the camera sensor should deliver good quality as its sourced from Samsung and is based on BSI (Backside illumination) technology. The picture quality of the camera is satisfactory, but the colours of the images weren’t vivid enough and the images look slightly washed out. To improve shots in low-light conditions, the camera is illuminated by dual LED flash. The camera interface is the same as found on all stock Android Jelly Bean devices, allowing users to capture images or videos or to click images in various modes – panorama, multi-angle view, HDR, and others. The smartphone is also capable of recording videos in full HD resolution.

Lava started promoting its Iris Pro series back in August last year, but it saw the light of the day only now. Had it been launched at that time, its current specs would have been pretty decent, but now most of the specs packed in the device are now available in devices priced as low as Rs 8,000. Powered by the MediaTek MT6589 quad-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz, it runs routine tasks without showing any signs of lag. The processor is complemented by a PowerVR SGX 544MP graphics processing unit for a smoother gaming and media experience. The 1GB RAM also helps in ensuring that the device doesn’t lag or stutter. We played Riptide GP2 on the device and it offered good gaming experience and reasonable water effects overall, although the gameplay wasn’t as smooth as it should be.