LAVA, the well known indigenous smartphone manufacturer, today revealed its new handset ie the Iris Fuel 60. The phone’s USP as the name suggests is the large battery that it packs. But does that it make it sufficiently interesting? We spent some time with the phone. Here’s what we thought about it.
The LAVA Iris Fuel 60 at first glance appears like a well built mid range handset. Certainly at a level higher than the price it commands. The front of the device showcases a 5 inch HD display and is flanked on all four sides by very large bezels. There are no capacitive buttons here and the front facing camera can be seen at the top as you’d expect.
The 720p IPS panel is covered by a Gorilla Glass 3 layer that promises to prevent scratches. That said the fascia of the handset is extremely glossy and prone to fingerprints. The right side of the phone sports the volume rocker and power button. We found tactile feedback to be limited and the buttons lacked sufficient ‘give’. The microUSB port lies at the bottom.
Given the size of the battery stuffed into the handset, the phone is fairly thick and heavy. The chubby handset might not fit smoothly into skinny jeans but the rounded grippy plastics certainly help with making sure you don’t drop the phone. The side view shot above should give you a good idea of the thickness of the handset. The 4,000 mAh unit is sealed in and is rated for 32 hours of talk time.
LAVA has built in a 10MP camera sensor over at the back of the handset. We’ll have more on that once we get our hands on the review unit but initial results seemed a bit of a hit or miss.
The phone itself is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core processor paired with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal memory. You can also expand storage by up to 32GB via the microSD card slot. The phone runs on Android 4.4.2 with an update to Lollipop 5.0 promised for next year. We found general performance to be satisfactory and the clean build of Android impresses.
Over all the LAVA Iris Fuel 60 seems like a great bet, more so for the enticing price point of Rs. 8,888. The phone combines decent performance with good ergonomics despite having a relatively massive battery build in. All in all the phone left us with good early impressions but we’ll wait to get our hands on a retail device to bring you the complete low down on the LAVA Iris Fuel 60.