Lava Iris X1 review

Lava launched its latest mid-range smartphone, the Iris X1 a couple of weeks ago. The Indian manufacturer has promised to deliver high-end smartphone experience at super attractive price tag.

The Lava Iris X1 comes with a quad-core 1.2GHz processor along with Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU on a Broadcom chipset. Let’s see how well it performs.

Retail Package

The Lava Iris X1 is packed in a standard retail box, inside which you can find A/C adapter, USB cable, headset, some paperwork, screen protector as well as the nice surprise that is the flip cover.

Retail box

Design

Lava has decided to go with the same design language as that of the Iris Pro 30. Sadly, the newest smartphone doesn’t bring any novelties. The Iris X1 is built using plastic with brushed aluminium frame running around the front panel. The device is a bit on the heavy side but that also contributes to the solid in hand feel it gives.

Lava Iris X1 live photos

On the front of the smartphone, we have the display along with three capacitive touch buttons – home, back and menu. These virtual buttons find themselves on the bezel, below the display and are not placed on-screen. The secondary camera, LED notification and an array of sensors are located on top.

The side of the smartphone

The power button is located on the right side of the smartphone and the volume rockers can be found on the left. The 3.5mm audio jack along with USB port is placed at the top, which means that the bottom is completely vacant.

The back of the device

At the back is where the 8 megapixel camera lens, the dual-LED flash and a microphone noise cancellation pinhole can be found. The speaker grille is right at the bottom centre. Underneath the back panel lie the removable battery and the three card slots – one of the microSD and two for SIM cards.

Display

Lava Iris X1 is equipped with a 4.5-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels. The numbers add up to a pixel density of 218ppi – which is quite modest by today’s standards.

In terms of the quality, the display has natural looking colors and the sharpness is quite sufficient. However, the visibility isn’t that great in outdoors and it tends to wash out considerably. There’s moderate contrast shift, but everything on the screen remains legible no matter how wide you tilt.

User Interface

Lava’s newest mid-range offering comes with Android 4.4 KitKat on board and the user interface remains largely similar to the stock Android. The quad-core 1.2GHz CPU along with the help 1GB of RAM does manage to keep the device running smoothly, but there’s considerable amount of lag when multiple applications are opened in the background.

Homescreen • App drawer • Settings menu

The good news is that the Iris X1 doesn’t come with unnecessary bloatware as the phone doesn’t carry any home-back or third-party software baggage. So, you get to pick your own favourites from the Google Play Store.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Performance of the device is one of the key aspects that most of us look for before picking up the product. So, we decided to take the Iris X1 for a benchmark spin in order to stack it up against some of its competition.

The first test was the single core CPU performance of the device with the help of the Benchmark Pi. As expected, the mid-ranger was only capable of delivering uninspiring performance with a score of 400.

Benchmark Pi

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  166
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• HTC One mini
  293
• Karbonn Titanium X
  298
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  346
• Lava Iris Pro 30
  372
• Xolo Q900
  388
• Lava Iris X1
  400
• Sony Xperia M
  400
• Lenovo P780
  407
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  409
• Sony Xperia L
  435
• Gigabyte GSmart Maya M1 v2
  488
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  499
• Sony Xperia go
  543
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  554
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  578
• HTC Desire X
  639
• Sony Xperia E dual
  800
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  831

Second up, we aimed to test the overall performance of the smartphone with the AnTuTu benchmarking. The score of 13,240 points was about as good as we could expect.

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• Karbonn Titanium X
  15397
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  14518
• Lenovo P780
  13611
• Lava Iris Pro 30
  13502
• Xolo Q900
  13292
• Lava Iris X1
  13240
• Gigabyte GSmart Maya M1 v2
  13216
• HTC Butterfly
  12631
• HTC One mini
  11434
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  11203
• Sony Xperia M
  9902
• Sony Xperia L
  9746
• Nokia Lumia 620
  9140
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  7408
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  6650

We then had the Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU sweating it out. The Epic Citadel test reveals that the company has opted for a lower clocked graphics unit.

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  59.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  57.1
• HTC One
  56.4
• HTC One mini
  56
• Sony Xperia Z
  
  55.6
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  55.5
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  54.7
• Nexus 4
  
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  
  53.4
• Sony Xperia M
  53.2
• LG Optimus G
  
  52.6
• Karbonn Titanium X
  
  46.2
• Lenovo P780
  
  44.1
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  
  41.3
• Lava Iris X1
  38.0
• Gigabyte GSmart Maya M1 v2
  34.0
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  24.9
• Lava Iris Pro 30
  16

Lastly, we had the Vallamo test that reveals the browsing performance of the device. The smartphone managed to find itself on the lower half of the table.

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia SP
  2497
• HTC One
  2382
• HTC One mini
  2252
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  2060
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2019
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Sony Xperia M
  1800
• Sony Xperia L
  1640
• Karbonn Titanium X
  1614
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1572
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• Xolo Q900
  1563
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Lava Iris Pro 30
  1476
• Gigabyte GSmart Maya M1 v2
  1471
• Lenovo P780
  1452
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  1366
• Nexus 4
  1310
• Samsung Galaxy Fame
  1234
• Lava Iris X1
  1200
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  1072
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1065

Camera

Lava Iris X1 packs an 8 megapixel sensor with dual-LED flash. The camera application on the phone has a very simple interface, which is something that we have seen in Nexus line up.There are some shortcuts located on the left side of the view finder. The setting options and the shooting modes are pretty limited, but get to manually adjust exposure, ISO and white balance.

Camera UI

We had the camera in action and the shooter produced average looking images. The pictures look detailed at the first glance, but the sharpness is turned up a lot. The dynamic range is rather poor and there’s noise in the image, but that is negligible especially considering the position of the device in the market.

Lava Iris X1 camera samples (the last one is shot in low light)

The camera manages to focus on the subject very quickly.

Conclusion

Lava Iris X1 is priced at USD$130 (Rs. 7,849) and it is already available. The smartphone competes against the likes of Motorola Moto E and Asus Zenfone 4.

The Iris X1 seems to provides a decent bang for your buck, combining a decent chipset with a non conspicuous UI, a big screen with a 1080p recording camera. However, it’s quite disappointing to see that the company hasn’t managed to get the most out of the Broadcom chipset. The display and the camera certainly aren’t something to write home about, but the overall performance is quite satisfactory considering what the competition has got to offer at a similar price tag.

The software is a cause of concern at this point in time as it comes with a fair share of bugs. But, the company can quickly and easily turn things on its head with a few software upgrades and patches.