Unboxed : The Lava Iris X1
The Moto E revolution is evident in the market and looks like its going to be the standard from here on. Like an asteroid it came and devastated the previous generation standard spec sheets of the lower-end smartphone market. Clearly, a new era of the lower-end smartphone evolution has begun and Lava just layed its claim to the throne with the Lava iris X1.
All major companies including Samsung have stated that they are going to bring in a competition for the Moto E. We feel it’s about time we should start a MOTO watch section to see how close the other folks are coming to touch the towering ceiling set by the Motorola.
The easy slide out box is pretty standard for a Lava device. The box contains the standard sets of inhabitants. A good sized micro USB wall charger, flat cable earphones, a round cable micro USB to USB cable. The back cover looks extremely flimsy but the branding on the back is pretty classy. It is an effort to hold it up, though the lack of a rubberized back panel makes it slippery.
Where the X1 wins over the Moto E is the free flip cover provided in the box. The flip cover is functional as the screen locks when it’s closed. Another cool aspect of the cover is that the volume rocker positions are marked on the cover itself so you can access them easily while on move. The only issue though, the white cover can get dirty, very easily.
The phone comes with the Android 4.4.2 right out of the box. It is powered by a removable 1800 mAh battery, which is slightly smaller than the non-removable 1980 mAh in the Moto E. The processor on the X1 is a Quad core 1.2 Ghz Broadcom chipset. It holds 1 GB of RAM and has an expandable memory upto 32 GB.
Coming to the handset, at the top it looks blatantly iPhone-ish minus the physical button. The screen is a 4.5 inch IPS display with a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels. The Moto G’s Corning Gorilla glass 3 is more pixel dense but the X1 isn’t that far behind, it has some good color reproduction capabilities.
Overall, it looks like a decent effort on the part of Lava, the most it could do at the moment in the face of stiff competition. Apart from the Moto E, Lava will also cross swords with Micromax which recently released its Unite 2. The phone has outperformed some of the major flagships in benchmark tests.
For the moment the phone is exclusively sold on Amazon at a price of Rs 7999. This is an audacious step, considering Lava is no Moto to have the luxury of exclusive marketing tie-ups. The X1’s closest competition, the Unite 2 costs Rs 6999 on flipkart.
For now, like Lava and others, we’ll wait and see how the market responds to this new era of intelligent evolution in the basic smartphones business.
