A friend of mine wanted me to suggest a mobile for her. She is a college student and on a limited budget. She loves to click selfies and share on social media. She wanted a mobile with a good front camera and priced at around 6k. As she stays in a hostel, she was more comfortable buying a device from a retail store, rather than online. So this particular query put me at task and I had to visit the local stores to check for the best option. This might be a common case with many others and hence I thought, ill pen down my experience.
After a few visits to the retail stores, I narrowed down to the Lava Iris X1 Selfie. It was priced at around Rs 6500. Not many stores near my location had a demo unit and I found one store which had a demo unit. I was happy to get a quick demo of the Lava Iris X1 Selfie so that I can be confident while suggesting the mobile to my little friend.
The Lava Iris X1 Selfie has a premium and stylish look, thanks to the chrome finish along the rim. It felt solid to hold in the hand. It was slightly heavy, but the weight was balanced and comfortable to hold. It has a 4.5 inch display protected by Asahi Dragontrail glass which is scratch resistant. Above the display is the 5 Mega pixel front facing camera with a single LED flash. The android menu keys were backlit. That was a huge relief. I have always complained about devices without backlit keys. The matte finish back offers decent grip and the rear camera is a 8Mp sensor with dual LED flash. On removing the back cover, I found slots for microSIM card, regular SIM card and also microSD card. The battery is 2000 mAh and for a device of this size and processing power, I am assuming, it could last for a day. It has a stylish look to it and I am sure it will be appealing to the college crowd.
It has just 8 GB of internal storage and additional microSD card slot for memory expansion. It has 1 GB of RAM and powered by a 1.3 GHz quad core mediaTek processor. The performance was decent. While fidling with the mobile for a short time, it showed no signs of lag. It runs on Android 5.1, and doesn’t have any custom skinning. I like mobiles with near stock android (nexus/android-one like) experience. The UI is simple and the material design is elegant.
Now to the selfie camera. The Lava Iris X1 Selfie has a 5 MP front facing camera and a 8 MP primary camera. The span (coverage area) of the front facing camera was really wide and the images had good brightness levels. It has a single LED flash to help you get better selfies even at low light conditions. The camera UI was simple and easy to use. The application in the mobile offers options to enhance the selfies with eye-enlargement, teeth whitening, skin smoothening, etc… The primary 8MP camera at the rear has a maxiumum aperture of f/2.0 for shooting at low light conditions. It has a backlit sensor that helps capture sharper images. The rear camera lens is protected by the scratch resistent Gorilla Glass 3.
All this for around Rs 6500 and I was convinced about this mobile. I didn’t get enough time to play with it, yet I was ready to recommend the device to my friend with confidence.