In a hotly contested 15k price segment of the Indian smartphone market, there is very little one can offer as USP that can beat the tight competition. Amidst this toughness, comes Lava, the “Proudly Indian” manufacturer with its Blaze X 5G, touted as the only phone with a segment-first 3D curve AMOLED display. Packing decent specs, the Blaze X 5G enters a tough battlefield where scrutiny is high and margin for error is low. Can it handle the heat? Let’s find out in the review.
General
The latest 5G smartphone, “Lava Blaze X” was launched by the Indian manufacturer on the 10th of July. The current price of this device is Rs. 14,999 for the 4GB RAM, 128GB ROM variant, Rs. 16,999 for the 8/128 variant and Rs. 15,999 for the 6/128 variant.
All three models are available on Amazon India and Lava’s official website as well. There are some bank offers available, like Rs. 1,500 instant discount for SBI cardholders, which makes the effective price of the top end variant at Rs. 15,499, which is the variant we have with us, for review. It is possible to get this smartphone from offline stores as well.
Looks and Feel
The Blaze X 5G shines when it comes to look and feel, as it easily takes the crown for one of the best looking smartphones in this price segment, with a claimed “segment-first” curved screen. The 2.5D curved glass for the display definitely evokes a premium look and feel. Adding to the aesthetics is the high quality plastic back, which, surprisingly, felt as good as matte glass, but at the same time, made the phone lightweight and easy to handle. The phone is just 8.45mm thick and weighs 183gm. The accents on the side are also done quite well, considering the price range. Along with the camera ring, the Blaze X 5G creates, successfully, an illusion of a high-end flagship.
The phone is available in two colors – Titanium Grey & Starlight Purple, in which, we have the Titanium Grey. The smartphone is not rated for any dust or water protection and no details are given for the glassmaker either, we can just assume that only the basics are covered. We can always use the case that is already given in the box (Handset, USB Cable Type-C, Charger, SIM Ejector Pin, USB-C to 3.5mm Connector, Back Cover).
Screen
If there’s one highlight that the Lava Blaze X 5G will be known for, it is the display downright good-looking display. It is a 6.67″ 3D Curved AMOLED display, running at 120Hz. It’s super smooth when it works without a heavy load, and shows up colors and contrast like a really high-end smartphone. Furthermore, it’s really sharp and immersive for watching videos and playing games.
The curved-edges experience and the color outputs, along with the brightness, will ensure a high quality experience for the buyer. Which is exactly why we would term the display a highlight of the Blaze X 5G. The display does not support HDR playback and supports a max playback resolution of 1440p on YouTube. The only small issue we faced in our experience was an inconsistent auto-brightness sensor, which tended to lower brightness a bit too much.
Performance
One of the most ubiquitous processors in this segment is powering this smartphone too, and that’s the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 with a running clock speed of 2.4GHz. Once all the heavy lifting is done, the processor sits on a smooth curve, being able to handle all the daily tasks thrown at it. It is definitely great for casual use and all the regular social-media level multitasking use cases, but for anything more, it starts to show some lag and some stutters due to the utter amount of heavy apps or games that are run on it. Beyond a point, there will be a visible slow down, but this is applied only to heavy users.
For casual users, the phone will be absolutely just fine, blazing through daily tasks without breaking a sweat. All the Blaze X 5G smartphones come with a 128GB UFS 2.2 ROM and, as discussed earlier, come in 3 RAM variants. Yes, there are features like extended RAM, to increase the RAM upto an additional amount of 8GB. Weirdly enough, there is no expandable memory – no micro SD card slot on this phone. In our use, there were no evidences of overheating issues or performance throttling. It’s best to turn the software feature “DuraSpeed” to OFF for no-throttle maximum performance in the background tasks.
In 3D Mark wild life stress test, it scored 99.6% which is just good. The temperature shot up from 30 to 38 degrees, which is not much. That aside, let’s check out how this phone performed in our benchmarks.
Camera
There are a total of 3 cameras on this Lava Blaze X 5G. The main camera is a Sony 64MP sensor IMX682 unit, with a 2MP depth sensor along with it in the camera module. The front camera is a 16MP unit, which is capable of recording 1080p videos max at 30 fps while the rear main camera is capable of recording 2k videos up to 30fps without EIS and 1080p up to 60fps without EIS and 30 fps with EIS.
These are not great specs to speak of, but at this price segment this is the norm, and we can’t expect much from the results either. They leave a lot of room for improvement. Here are some camera samples from which you can make your own judgement.
From our experience, the camera performs decently well in good lighting conditions, especially in high contrast conditions, but when it comes to low contrast scenes where the shadow details are higher, there is a weird HDR effect that takes over, and the processing becomes a bit saturated and too unnatural. In low light conditions, the sensor struggles to keep up with stability and results in blurry photos with shake.
However, in video there is EIS which can be used to stabilize the footage. One of the unique features about this phone is that it offers a pro video mode with controls for shutter, focus, ISO and white balance. Plus, there is an option for Dual-Video as well, to use both the front and rear cameras together in one frame. The video quality and the audio quality leave a lot of room for improvements as well.
Battery
The 5,000 mAH battery on the Lava Blaze X 5G is a solid performer that can last for up to 2 days for a moderately heavy user. A full day of social media usage, calls and whatsapp, pls a bit of casual gaming can easily last till night. The average screen on time will be around 6 hours for this kind of usage and if standby time increases, the battery longevity will increase as the phone can power down without losing a lot of battery.
The combination of this battery and the Dimensity 6300 processor guarantees power efficiency and longevity in our experience of the Lava Blaze X 5G. There is a 33W fast charger included in the box along with the smartphone, and it definitely works to the advantage of charging the phone much quicker. Overall, a thumbs up to the Blaze X 5G in the battery department.
Software
Running on Android 14, the Lava Blaze X 5G features a literally vanilla AOSP image, with minimal modifications and zero bloatware. Apart from default Google apps, you will find almost nothing pre-installed on the Blaze X 5G, which is a major departure from the other brands that go around in this segment, with nearly 2 to 3GBs of pre-installed apps that cannot be uninstalled. This is a major win for Lava. However, on the updates side, they have promised only one major upgrade to Android 15, and only 2 years of security updates.
The overall experience of the software is clean and easy to use but at the same time, there will be a lot of desire for custom skin users for theming and other options which are not available in plenty. Customization is definitely the downside of not having a cluttered UI. There are many exclusive features hidden inside the UI, of it, the main one being “background play” toggle on the quick actions buttons menu. This enables you to have background playback of ANY app, even on YouTube, you won’t need a “Premium” account to enable background playback. This is a nice little hack that only Lava phones tend to have these days.
Other stuff
5G is obviously a main focus here, on this Lava Blaze X smartphone. Here are the bands that are supported by this phone –
5G: n1/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n40/n41/n66/n77/n78 SA/NSA
The radios on this phone are good on paper. In our experience, there was problem in using the Jio network, which is exclusively on 4G/5G. However, using Airtel was a hit or miss, we suggest trying your SIM inside the phone and then buy it. While there is no Voice-Over-NR, VoLTE is there and VoWiFi is also there, enabling standard connectivity protocols and standards. There are no range issues that were discovered during the course of our review.
There is no 3.5mm audio jack on this smartphone, but there is an adapter that is given in the box. The speakers have good sound quality, although they are not stereo, they are loud enough to be audible in a small room. In terms of biometric security – there is an in-display optical fingerprint scanner that works decently well. It was fast and reliable in our review.
Overall
The Lava Blaze X 5G is a stylish performer in this mid-range segment of smartphones selling in the Indian market. The curved screen and the display in it are the standout features that will attract the keen customer who is in for good looks. The lack of bloatware, the anonymous call recording option, the smooth operating performance will draw in the minimalist who likes a simple smartphone experience that is in the lines of a Google Pixel.
In terms of drawbacks, the phone could do with better cameras, with a major boost needed for its processing algorithms. This smartphone can hence be recommended to people who prefer a good design and decent performance. In this segment, the Lava Blaze X 5G offers good value for money, for its style and its performance. Under huge scrutiny in a tightly contested market, the Lava Blaze X 5G still stands as a clean and tidy alternative to the plenty of custom-skinned options with bloatware.