Lava Mobiles is one of the well-known Indian mobile brands in the market. The company offers a wide range of budget friendly and value for money phones in its portfolio and has a reputable presence across India. Recently, Lava launched its Iris X8 smartphone which is its budget friendly octa-core smartphone. We take a look at what the smartphone brings to the table at an affordable price tag.
Premium design
The Iris X8 is a well-designed smartphone and certainly looks better than most competing phones. The nicely rounded edges and the matte back gives the phone an ergonomic feel. The entire edge is wrapped in metal finish plastic adding to the premium look of the smartphone. The phone offers a loudspeaker at the back which comes with two raised rubber dots on either side of the loudspeaker to make it audible even when the phone is placed on its back.
Beautiful Display
The displays is a very important part of a smartphone and the 720p HD display on the Iris X8 does the job quite well. The 5-inch LCD panel is very responsive to touch and offers a smooth touch experience even with greasy hands. The colours on the display look vibrant and well saturated. Colour shift at extreme angles is minimal and sunlight legibility is decent as well.
Octa-core power
The phone may carry a very reasonable price tag but it is powered by an octa-core processor. This translates into smooth navigation through the UI and good gaming performance. Multi-tasking with various apps is also dealt with ease as the phone features 2GB of RAM. The Iris X8 also features 16GB of internal storage which is almost double of what most competing devices offer.
Better 8MP camera
8MP cameras are not a new thing in the sub-10K category of smartphones but the 8MP rear shooter on the Iris X8 is a good one. Pictures taken by the rear camera look sharp, well-balanced and with accurate colour-saturation. The output of the 3MP front-facing camera is better than the competition and offers beauty mode for selfie lovers.
Intelligent UI
The Lava Iris X8 runs on Android Kitkat 4.4.2 out of the box without any major bloatware which is appreciated. Lava has also promised to upgrade this phone to Android L in the near future. The UI feels smooth and responsive but there is more to it. Lava has added smart gestures as well as air gestures to the Iris X8. This lets you open the web browser with an ‘e’ gesture right from the lock screen and you can even customize these gestures as per your liking. The ‘Air gesture’ method is a nice trick as well. It lets you navigate through supported apps by waving your hand over the touch screen without touching it.
The Lava Iris X8 is a good smartphone to buy if your budget is under the 10K mark. It packs a great design, noteworthy performance and a good camera in a very nicely designed package.