Lava has launched two budget phones in its Iris series, Lava iris 356 and Lava iris 402. This Iris series features around 13 smartphones with the flagship phone of the series being the popular Lava iris 504Q with gesture control features. Let’s see what the entry level devices in this series are providing.
Lava iris 356 is powered by a 1.2 GHz dual core processor which is quite impressive at this price range. The RAM capacity is 256 MB and won’t support the dual core processor quite effectively. The Android version 4.2 jelly bean is above average at this price range. Internal storage capacity is 100 MB which is a justified trade off. It can be further expanded to 32 GB using a microSD card. It comes equipped with a 1.3 MP rear camera with Flash and a VGA front camera for video calling.
This device sports a 3.5 Inch display with 320 x 480 (HVGA) pixel resolution, this is also standard at this price range and will suffice for the general usage for which budget android phones are intended. The battery capacity of 1500 mAh will give you 5 hrs of talk time and 200 hrs of stand by time. Connectivity features include, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPRS and EDGE. This phone has been priced at Rs. 4,499
Lava iris 402 comes with a slightly bigger 4.0 inch display with a better resolution of 480 x 800(WVGA) pixels. The chipset specifications remain same. This phone too comes with a 1.2 GHz dual core processor backed by a 256 MB RAM and with 100 MB of internal storage further extendable to 32 GB using a microSD card. The operating system is Android 4.2 jelly bean.
The camera features include a 3MP primary camera with flash and a VGA front camera for video calling. The battery capacity remains same at 1500 mAh but with increased display size and resolution the back up will suffer. You will get a talktime of 4 hrs which might be a deal breaker for many. Connectivity features include WiFi, Bluetooth, EDGE , 3G and GPRS. This phone will cost you Rs. 5,499
Both these phones are basic phones and you can buy them if you want to update from your feature phones to Android devices. They come with various preloaded social networking Apps and will suffice for general purpose usage. At this price range the hardware specifications ensure value for money. If you are looking for options you can look at recent launched Karbonn A5 star, Karbonn A1 Star and Intex Cloud X3.