Lava Iris 406q

The Lava Iris 406Q sports a 4-inch display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. With a pixel density of 233ppi, the display is sharp enough with no visible pixelation. Colours tend to look washed out, but the device gives you a choice of standard, vivid and custom options to change the colour scheme. Automatic brightness doesn't seem to work most of the times, so it’s better to set the level yourself. Under sunlight, the display is legible, though you might have to struggle a bit.

When it comes to the Lava Iris 406Q's camera performance, the entry-level pricing didn't help in getting our hopes up. We were disappointed with the fact that the camera is fixed-focus. The camera interface is slightly different from the stock Android app, but offers almost the same set of options. It allows you to take normal images, panorama, photos in continuous mode, HDR, and add various effects. The settings menu gives you a ton of options to adjust exposure, white balance, sharpness and ISO, among others.

The smartphone is powered by Android Jelly Bean 4.3. Although the vendor has promised an upgrade to 4.4 KitKat, it’s yet to arrive. The Iris 406Q may not feature heavy customisations like other offerings, but it does sport a few differences when compared to stock Android UI. In fact, we were little surprised as these subtle, yet useful changes weren’t present in the brand’s premium Iris Pro range – the Iris Pro 20 and Iris Pro 30.

There’s no doubt that Lava has packed strong hardware into the Iris 406Q for its asking price. It’s one of the very few devices in this price band powered by a Qualcomm SoC instead of MediaTek. It packs in a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 200 chipset and a gigabyte of RAM for multitasking. The device performs well and there’s no sign of lag while navigating screens, opening and closing apps and even playing games. The integrated Adreno 302 GPU renders good graphics. Games like RipTide GP2 and SmashHit ran well, though there’s a noticeable lag when heavy graphics are being displayed. But the good news is that the handset doesn’t heat up while playing.

Photos by Pratik Vyas