Lava recently launched its latest flagship smartphone in India, the Lava Iris Icon. The Icon is a good looking phone and offers premium design, a very good camera and noteworthy performance. We took a closer look at all these aspects to further understand the Iris Icon.
Distinct Design
Right from the very moment you pick up the phone, it feels quite elite. Design attributes like the metal finish strip under the display or the chamfered band with metal finish running around the smartphone give it a premium feel. The back and the buttons are also given equal detailing. The back is given a glass like look and the buttons looks well machined giving the phone a very distinctive and premium feel.
High Definition display
As you power on the smartphone, you are greeted by a 5-inch HD display and Lava has used an IPS panel which makes the viewing experience much better. The display is sharp and has good colour vibrancy. Content looks good under any lighting condition on the display, whether its just text or a movie. Since it’s an IPS display, viewing angles are also good. The screen is covered in Dragontrail glass made by Asahi making it less prone to damage from scratches and accidental drops.
Optimal Performance
To power the smartphone, Lava has installed the phone with a powerful 1.3Ghz Quad-core MediaTek SoC. Graphics are handled by a Mali 400 MP2 GPU which is a capable GPU in its category. There is 2GB of RAM which handles multitasking well and there is 16GB of onboard storage. The storage can be extended further via a 32GB microSD card. This sums up to be a good package in terms of performance.
A 13MP rear camera
The Lava Icon Iris boasts of a 13MP BSI-II rear camera with f/2.0 aperture. The image software combined with the powerful camera is capable of taking good pictures in ideal lighting conditions. Images taken by the rear camera have good colour saturation, features good dynamic range and nice balance of sharpness and contrast.
Battery and Connectivity
The battery plays a huge part in making a smartphone stay by your side through the day and the 2500mAh battery on the Lava Iris Icon does that quite efficiently. On the connectivity front, the smartphone offers Dual-SIM capabilities and support for 3G SIMs. The phone also features Bluetooth 4.0 which is still available only in a handful of phones.
Star Power
Lava Iris Icon features Lava's own Star OS ROM. The ROM is based on Android 4.4.2 Kitkat. Star OS enhances some of the Android features and also incorporates some new ones. The settings menu for example has been sorted into three different categories which makes it much easier to navigate through. It brings various animations for app drawers and homescreens.
However, the best part is the smart gesture panel which lets you set custom gestures to open certain apps. Some of these gestures also work when the display is off.