Lava Iris Selfie 50 Review

Selfie focused smartphones are gaining a lot of popularity these days and it is not just the premium segment, but also in budget category. Few days back Lava announced its second selfie smartphone, the Iris Selfie 50. The phone comes with a FWVGA resolution display (854 X 480 pixels) with a pixel density of 240ppi. The display has IPS panel and supports multi touch.  The device is  powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor and runs on Android 4.4.2 (KitKat).

Related Reading: 10 Best Selfie Smartphones

On the imaging front, it features a 8-megapixel rear camera with dual LED flash and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with LED flash to capture better selfies, similar to the Iris X5. Both the cameras have auto focus capabilities. It has 1GB RAM, 8GB internal memory, expandable memory up to 32GB with microSD. The device supports dual SIM and packs 2400 mAh battery.

Related Reading: Lava Iris Selfie 50 Unboxing

Here is the video review of the device, for text version read on.

Design and Build:

Design wise, the Lava Iris Selfie 50 is a fairly good looking phone and much better than the Android One series phones. The build quality is also acceptable with matte finish back panel and also metallic finish around the sides. The front panel has the 5 inch display and on top of it houses the front camera and the flash unit along with the usual sensors. At the bottom you have the three capacitive buttons which are backlit but do not offer haptic feedback.

The power button is on the right side while the volume key sits on the left side. The micro USB port and also the 3.5mm  audio jack are located on the top. The rear panel houses the 8MP camera and the dual LED flash along with the speakers. The rear panel is removable and has the dual SIM card slot and also the micro SD card expansion slots.

Overall, the phone does have pretty good design and decent build quality for a phone in 7k price range.

Display:

The device sports a 5 inch FWVGA display (854 X 480) pixels giving it a pixel density of less than 200. The screen resolution is pretty low for a 5 inch device and this really shows up on the display. The display also has IPS technology which means viewing angles are pretty decent. There is also ambient light sensor, so it can automatically adjust the brightness. The brightness levels are just ok and the Honor Holly is far better in this aspect.

The touch response is pretty decent and the sunlight readability is not really great on the phone. The Lava Iris Selfie 50 is a downgrade from the previously released Iris X5 which sports a HD display. Overall, the display is not great considering it has a large 5.0 inch display and the resolution is pretty low.

Software and Performance:

The phone comes with Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box and Lava hasn’t done too much of customization to the UI and it looks more or less like the core Android. The notification center is similar to any Android phones and here again there is no customization. The notification center has the default set of quick toggles as well. The phone runs on 1.2 GHz quad-core processor from Broadcom with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage.

The performance of the device is pretty good and there was no lag or issues in normal usage. Multi tasking was also pretty good. Lava has included few apps like Adaptxt keyboard, Aviary photo editor and also a backup solution. There is also default File manager and FM radio included in the phone.

The phone has dual SIM cards and has dedicated section for managing them. The phone did not have any call drops and the voice clarity was pretty good. The speaker out is pretty average and the gaming performance with quad core processor was just average. The graphic quality as not great and the display resolution is really low. Heavy graphic rich games like Asphalt 8 had considerable amount of lag while playing.

The phone comes with 8GB internal storage and out of which close to 6GB is user available as internal storage and phone storage. You can also expand via microSD card. The phone also supports USB OTG out of the box.

Camera:

The phone comes with a 8MP rear camera and dual LED flash, the same camera found in the Lava Iris X5 whcih was released couple of months back. The camera interface on the Selfie 50 has fair amount of features including scenes, Panorama, ISO, white balance, contrast, sharpness, timer etc. There are no filters or modes available on the camera. The video recording of the camera is at 720P and there is no 1080P option. The photos taken using the camera have fair amount of clarity. But under sunlight lot of photos looked like over exposed and the colors look a bit washed out. Even the macro shots didn’t have actual colors although they were pretty good in detailing. The 720P taken with the 8MP camera is just average. The dual flash over exposed the photos when in macro mode and looked terribly out of sync.

The phone also has 5MP front camera for selfies as the name of the phone indicates. The front camera has a wide angle lens and comes with flash as well. Although there isn’t anything special included in the camera software for selfies, the front camera does have amazing capabilities and in many photos, it did exhibit better colors than the rear camera. The images from the front camera had better clarity and sharpness. The front facing flash also works very well. See below for front camera shots.

Here are some of the samples from the camera.

Rear camera:

Front Selfie camera:

Battery Life:

The phone comes with 2400mAh battery which is pretty good capacity considering most of the phones in the 7k price range have close to 2000mAh. The phone does have pretty good battery and life and in our tests we could achieve a day of usage under normal conditions. We had few social networking apps running in the background, played some games, email was configured and few calls and the phone connected to 3G all the time. On an average, the phone will fetch your one day of battery performance with the 2400mAh battery.

Verdict:

The device is priced at Rs 7400 and at this price we have numerous phones with better specs and features and even at lower price. So is the Lava Iris Selfie 50 worth a buy? This phone makes sense only if you are too much into taking selfies, if not there are better options in the form of Honor Holly, Moto E or Redmi 1S.