Lava launched Iris Pro 30, the company’s latest flagship last month after a long delay. We already brought you the Hands-on, photo gallery, unboxing, benchmarks and camera samples of the device. The Iris Pro 30, the first phone in the Iris Pro series is quite different from previous Lava smartphones in terms of design and hardware. Can it compete with other phones in the similar range? Let’s find out in the complete review.

Unboxing

We brought the unboxing of Lava Iris Pro 30 last week, check out the unboxing video below.

Box Contents

Hardware and Design

The first thing you notice about the smartphone is its stunning 4.7-inch HD display with 312 ppi pixel density. The IPS screen is sharp, bright, offers vibrant color output and has great viewing angles. It is a bit glossy and is prone to finger prints, but the sunlight legibility is good. Lava has sourced the display from Sharp, which is based on (OGS) technology that reduces the phone’s thickness by reducing the air gap between the touch sensor, display and the cover glass. The display also has Corning Gorilla Glass protection. This is one of the best displays we have seen in a smartphone priced under 20k till date.

The design of the phone reminds us of iPhone with curved corners and the design of the earpiece. It has magnesium alloy frame, so the phone weighs just 114 grams.

There is a 3-megapixel camera next to the earpiece which can record videos at VGA resolution. Other than the usual proximity and ambient light sensor, you also have a LED notification light on the top. This lights up in different colors such as Blue, Orange, Red and more, depending on the type of notifications such as low battery indication.

You have the usual set of capacitive touch buttons below the display for menu, home and back. These light up when pressed and offer haptic feedback. You can also disable the light completely from the settings. These are perfectly backlit without any bleeds.

On the right side you have the power button and the volume rocker. These are accessible comfortable even for one-handed usage.

There is nothing on the left side. The phone is just 7.5 mm thick, thanks to the OGS display. Even though the sides of the phone are shiny, it is not prone to fingerprints.

On the bottom, there is a micro USB slot and a tiny microphone hole.

On the top, you just have a 3.5mm audio jack.

The phone is easy to hold and doesn’t slip out of your hands. It has a removable back cover with matte finish.

There is a 8-megapixel camera on the back with BSI sensor and dual LED flash. You also have a secondary microphone hole for ambient noise cancellation and better audio while recording videos.

Since the back cover has a smooth matte finish, it is prone to fingerprints. There is a loudspeaker grill on the bottom along with Lava branding. As you might have noticed, there are two bushes next to the speakers that slightly raise the phone so that the loudspeaker output doesn’t get affected.

The back cover could be removed easily, which reveals the SIM and memory card slots and the battery.

On the left there is a micro SD card slot. Next to it is the full-sized SIM or mini SIM card slot. You also have a micro SIM slot next to it. You have to open the latch and place the micro SIM inside and close it, so that it doesn’t move out of its place.

The phone packs a 2000 mAh Lithium Polymer battery. Even though the back cover is removable, the battery is not removable.

Camera

The 8MP shooter takes decent shots in daylight, but the low-light shots were just average with noise, even though the camera has a Back Side Illumination (BSI) sensor. Macro shots came out well, but it takes some time to focus an object. Dual LED flash is too bright at times, which makes the images look washed out lacking colors. You can see the usual MediaTek camera interface with a navigation bar on the left pane.

Check out some camera samples below

Check out more Iris Pro 30 camera samples here.

It can record videos at 1080p resolution at 30 fps. Thanks to the secondary microphone, audio is crisp, but the video quality could be better. You also have EIS and other camera features seen on other MediaTek-powered phones.

Software

Coming to the software part, the phone runs on Android 4.2.1 (Jelly Bean) which is pretty much stock, with added software features. You have all the Android 4.2 features such as Quick Settings, rich notifications, option to open the camera directly from the lock screen, lockscreen widgets, Daydream and more.

Lava has added a graph in the notification bar to show data regarding the performance of the phone in real time.

It shows graphs based on the CPU, Memory, signal and battery. You can hide it by pressing the graph icon on top. It also has gesture-based features such as Flip to Mute incoming calls, Lift to Answer a call and Lift to call a contact when their details are displayed on the screen.

Out of 1GB of RAM, you get 971 MB of usable RAM, out of which about 550 MB of RAM is free when the phone is idle. Out of 4GB of internal storage, you get 1.48 GB of storage for apps and just 930MB for mass storage.

You can also set the SD card as default write disk, if you insert one. You can also move apps from the phone memory to the SD card.

Apps

The phone has quite a few preloaded apps. You get the usual set of utility apps and the Google Apps including the Chrome browser, apart from the stock Android browser. The Backup and Restore app lets you back up data and apps, so that you can restore it later. Instead of Xolo care seen on Xolo phones, you have Lava Care that lets you contact the customer care center easily.

Music Player and FM Radio

The Music Player is stock, which can play several audio formats, including MP3 You can enable equalizer from the settings and use Bass boost and 3D effect features when you are listening using earphones. There is a new feature called gesture, but we are not sure how this works, since there is no way to set these gestures. The phone has FM Radio with auto search, recording and RDS support. Audio from the loudspeaker is good. The tiny bushes near the loudspeaker helps to improve the audio output even when the phone is placed on a flat surface. The in-ear earphones sound good, but it could be better.

The phone can play 1080p full HD videos smoothly. Lava has added a Video PIP (Picture in Picture) feature that shows the same video in a tiny window. You can close the tiny window easily, but it doesn’t continue playing from where you left it, when you go back to the full screen mode.

Calls and Messaging

The dialer’s theme is a bit different from other phones, but the keyboard is stock. Since it has dual SIM support, you can select either SIM cards from the drop-down notification bar before making a call or sending an SMS.

Dual SIM and Connectivity

It has dual SIM support with a standard SIM and a micro SIM. Both the SIM cards support 3G, but you can enable 3G on only one SIM, while the other is on 2G. The connectivity features include, 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP and GPS. It supports USB on-the-go (OTG), but it doesn’t come with a OTG cable in the box.

Performance and Benchmarks

It is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core MediaTek 6589 processor with PowerVR SGX 544MP2 GPU, which is mostly seen on most of the mid-range smartphones from local OEMs. The phone does lag a bit due to low memory when multi-tasking, but it should be fine if you are not running memory-intensive apps in the background. We ran some synthetic benchmark tests on the phone recently. Check out the benchmark scores below.

Quadrant Benchmark

It managed to score over 4000 points in the Quadrant benchmark.

AnTuTu Benchmark 4

In the AnTuTu Benchmark, it scored just 13541 points.

Vellamo 2.0 HTML5

It scored 1455 points in the Vellamo 2 HTML5 browser benchmark.

Check out the complete set of Lava Iris Pro 30 benchmarks here.

We also tested some games on the phone. Gameplay performance was good in most games such as Asphalt 8 when the graphics was set low. Check out the Asphalt 8 gameplay below.

Overall, the gameplay performance was good, but the graphics could be better. It also supports PlayStation 3 controller over the USB OTG cable. Check out the gaming review below.

Battery life

The phone packs a 2000 mAh non-removable Lithium Polymer battery. Thanks to the CABC (Content Adaptive backlight control) screen brightness regulation technology, this automatically reduces screen brightness for better battery life. Lava says that it would offer 30% more battery life, compared to other phones in the similar range. Watching videos doesn’t drain the battery a lot, and battery lasts for a whole day with full charge even with heavy use. It also has a built-in power saving option that lets you save the battery life by turning of WiFi, Bluetooth and other connectivity options, when the battery is low.

Conclusion

At a price tag of Rs. 15999, the Lava Iris Pro 30 is costly compared to other phones in the similar price range, but it excels in main departments such as display, build and battery life. Overall performance is good, expect for occasional lags, mainly due to 1GB of RAM. If you can live an average camera and performance for the stunning display and premium build, go for it.

Pros

Cons