Lava Iris 504Q Review: Low on price but high on performance

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 Lava Iris 504Q is easily one of the best local branded smartphones that I’ve come across in a long time. Belonging to a very competitive segment of 10k-15k INR this phone is all what you might want in your next android phone.

Priced at INR 12600 (market open price) this phone beats the best what the competition has to offer.

Lava is not among the best and most preferred Indian mobile companies but recently Lava has been making huge strides in local market. The expertise that they got with previous Xolo flagship phones is also helping them quite a bit.

Lava has made a few customizations on the vanilla android and also added some new functionalities which turned out to be a mixed bag of cookies. Some of them can help improve your productivity while the other are plainly annoying.

The list of additional features goes like this: Schedule power On/Off, Gesture for clicking pictures, zooming pictures and scrolling through them in the image gallery.

Specifications

• Pros
• Cons

• Excellent Display
• Doesn’t heat up easily
• Great performance for its asking price

• Gestures are troublesome
• Low Audio Levels
• Poor Low Light Imaging

Box Contents

Standard accessories+USB OTG cable+flip-cover

Design: Looks Premium

The plastic back panel is coated with some rubberised material and the chrome plated bezel along with front OGS (one glass solution) display adds to the looks of the phone.

Alike other 5 inchers phones this phone is also vulnerable on the display while the back panel feels sturdy. With its maximum thickness at just 8.4 mm this phone feels like a premium phone and at times gives us the impression that it belongs to a category higher than its price segment.

The proximity and the front camera are located on the top right corner just next to the earpiece grill whereas the secondary mic is located just below the LED flash which in turn is located below the 8MP camera on the back side. The primary mic is placed at the extreme right bottom on the bezel.

The speaker grill is located at the bottom left corner on the back panel and the capacitive buttons for providing haptic feedback are placed just below the display. These buttons are very sensitive and didn’t miss a single touch.

front cam and sensors

top

back

bottom

capacitive buttons

left

right

thickness

The gesture detection for clicking pictures and scrolling though the gallery is not a pleasant experience at all.

Here is why (Caution: The following tab contains technical content, you can skip it if you want to):

Now, when you hover your hand to the left the next item is displayed in the gallery. Are you thinking about going back to the previous image in the gallery using this cool gesture? If yes, then you’re out of luck. The proximity sensor is programmed to display the next item no matter how you hover your hand above it.

 Another awesome but severely irritating functionality is also the courtesy of gesture recognition to click to pictures. Generally people use both of their hands to hold such big smartphones while taking photographs.

The left hand is used to hold the phone while a part of the smartphone’s top portion comes under the palm. The right hand’s thumb or index finger is used to tap on the display or the Shutter button.

But thanks to the gesture recognition tech. you have to change your habit of holding a phone while taking snaps because if you don’t listen to me then you will take tons of accidental shots as the left hand might come over the proximity sensor triggering it to take pictures.

Magnification gestures– It is just there to add more unwanted functionalities to the phone. The default double tap to zoom works just fine.

User Interface: Pure Vanilla

The Lava Iris 504Q is based upon almost pure android v4.2.1 Jelly Bean and that means it retain the original vanilla flavour. The user interface and browsing through the menus is very fluid owing to the constant frame rate of 60fps, thanks to project butter.

The capacitive touch screen supports up to 5 finger multi-touch and is very responsive to operate. The capacitive buttons at the bottom of the screen provide haptic feedback without any miss.

homescreen

settings toggles

menu 1

menu 2

phonebook-contact

gallery

magnification gestures

schedule power on-off

talkback

The Schedule Power On/Off is another nifty feature provided by Lava.

Display: Gorgeous

The Iris 504Q is graced by a 5 inch IPS LCD HD display translating to a pixel density of 294 ppi. The display is sharp and crisp to look at and is also capable of producing accurate and natural colors. The sunlight legibility of the LCD display is more than acceptable at 50% brightness. The viewing angles on the other hand are excellent owing to the use of IPS and OGS technology.

The dialling screen is basic in looks and can be operated very easily using a single hand.

 Sound and Multimedia: Disappoints

The audio levels produced by the loudspeakers at the back is not up to the mark and it would be difficult to hear the phone ringing in the city traffic on a two-wheeler.

The default music player comes with repeat and shuffle features and you can use either MusicFX or Fusion to apply some music effects (equalizer).

music player options

fusion equalizer

audio equalizer

video player sharing

Compatible Formats- The default music player can handle .mp3 and .aac tracks very well. The video player on the other hand played videos ranging from 480p to 1080p in the .mp4, .flv, .avi and .mkv formats effortlessly. 

Unlike the music player, the video player sans extra functionalities and supports only Stop and Loop functions.

Typing: Does the job

The Iris 504Q passed our typing tests with flying colors as it was easy to compose the message in portrait mode using a single hand and also using both the hands in the landscape configuration. The predictive dictionary works fine and is not over eager to jump to any predictions. If you can speak English fluently without the local accent then the Voice dictation can also be used to frame a message.

landscape mode

portrait mode

Browsing

The android web-kit browser supports pinch to zoom and Adobe flash meaning you can enjoy your favourite flash games on it while the quad-core processor makes browsing buttery smooth and lag free. The images and text on the webpages looked crisp and clear which takes the browsing experience to a whole new level.

Camera: Not that Good

Lava has decided to not participate in the mega pixel race and has equipped its flagship phone with an 8MP BSI sensor. Equipped with an LED flash and Auto focus this camera can take very high quality images with a resolution of 3264×2448 pixels.

The front facing 1.9MP camera can shoot 1600×1200 pixel stills and makes video chatting possible. The primary camera fires up in just over 1.75s and comes with zero shutter lag enabling you to capture any scene instantly. The camera interface is also very basic but comes with extra options like EIS, face detection, beauty shot etc. The primary 8MP snapper can shoot 1080p video @30fps of not so good quality.

Camera UI

Camera Nornal Mode

Camera Settings 1

camera settings 2

photo settings

video settings

Many people are of the opinion that the image quality of the Iris 504Q is not acceptable but I have a different opinion.

I agree that the images produced by it are somewhat over-saturated but if you set the saturation to Low then you will be delighted to see the resultant photographs.

The only thing about the camera that left us disappointed was its low light performance. Besides having a BSI sensor the camera was not able to focus on the test object and its low light performance was also very shoddy. The overall camera performance is not bad considering its price point. The colors produced by the 8MP snapper are accurate (when saturation is set low) and it is capable of resolving a reasonable level of details. The low light performance sucks but you can ignore it if you are not a nocturnal creature.

Untouched Camera Samples

normal shot

HDR Shot

zoom 1x

zoom 1.51x

zoom 2x

zoom 3.03x

zoom 4x

low light shot without flash

low light shot with Flash

Low Saturation

Medium Saturation

Panorama

Hardware Performance: Excellent

The quad-core processor running on top of JB 4.2.1 enables effortless and smooth multi-tasking. The gaming experience was a treat and we were able to enjoy Modern Combat 2 to the core.

 Benchmarks Scores Screenshots

1. Multi-tasking test- Passed the high level multi-tasking test without any hiccups.
2. i.  Startup time- 23.9s ii. Restart time- 37.53s

Apps and Games

The phone comes with a lot of Pre-installed and mostly useful apps like – paytm, Whatsapp, twitter, Opera Mini, MX player, hungama music app, movie studio, Variety theme and some games likes modern combat 2, shark dash and Wonder Zoo.

Connectivity

The Iris 504Q is also an all-rounder on the connectivity side of things. It covers connectivity options like AGPS, HSPA+, EDGE, Bluetooth v3.0, WLAN 802.11 b/g/n with WiFi hotspot, micros USB v2.0 with support for USB On-The-Go.

Battery

Equipped with a Li-Ion 2000mAh battery, this phone can easily last for a day on normal usage with brightness set to auto.  Unlike the other smartphones of this segment the battery doesn’t heat up very quickly enabling you to feast your eyes on FHD movies for a longer time.

One of the best phones in the price segment of 10-15k INR. This gorgeous phone houses a quad-core processor along with 1 GB RAM and is coupled with a powerVR SGX 544mp graphics to take care of the gaming needs. It outperforms the internationally branded smartphones from the segment it belongs and makes them lick the dust.

It is highly recommended for gaming freaks who are short on budget to go for the smartphones from the big guys like Samsung, HTC, Apple, Sony etc.

• Buy if you are
• Skip if you are
• BUY NOW

• A gaming addict
• Movie buff
  
  

• An avid photographer