Lava Iris X1 first impressions: With Moto E out of stock, this could be a good pick

The Moto E really rattled the entry-level segment which has made manufacturers, both small and big, sit up and take notice. Right on the heels of Motorola’s new budget announcement, we heard Lava and Micromax announce their answer to Motorola’s offering and there are even talks of Samsung working on a budget KitKat phone.

With the Moto E still out of stock, these alternatives could be the best thing consumers need to fill the void. But are they good enough? Despite the low price of the Moto E, Motorola hasn’t compromised on the quality of the materials used or the user experience. Can our local brands match the same quality levels whilst offering better features?

The Lava Iris X1 is the first of many more ‘Moto E killers’ to come along. Sold exclusively via Amazon for now, the X1 promises a much better feature set all round for a thousand rupees more. We’ve been fortunate to get our hands rather quickly on a final retail unit (thanks to Lava) of the X1 and here’s our first impression after using it for a day.

The X1 is available in black and white and incorporates the same design language as the Iris Pro 30, Lava’s first in-house designed smartphone. Call it a iPhone rip-off if you must but the truth of the matter is that it looks good and the X1 doesn’t look like a Rs 8,000 phone at all. The construction is extremely sturdy and the plastic is devoid of creaks and everything sits flush together.

The phone looks much better than the Moto E, but not quite as rugged. It’s also slightly longer than the Moto E due to the slightly larger display and thicker bezel on the top and bottom. Speaking of the display, the 4.5-inch qHD IPS panel delivers vivid colours and good viewing angles. However, when compared to the Moto E side-by-side, one can easily tell the difference due to the lower pixel count compared to Motorola’s offering.

Screen sensitivity is good however and so is the touch response. The display also doesn’t wash out easily under sunlight. Lava hasn’t skimped on the basics at all as you get a front-facing camera, ambient light sensor, ergonomically placed buttons, removable battery and an 8MP BSI camera with dual-LED flash.

The camera is actually quite excellent for macros and you get a healthy amount of depth of field as well. The camera UI might be stock KitKat but the focusing speed is a lot better than even say , the Nexus 5. Here are some sample shots. We’ll be testing the camera in more detail during our course of the review.

The Lava Iris X1 is priced at Rs 7,999, exclusively via Amazon.in. If you order now, Lava is also throwing in a free 16GB SD card to sweeten the deal. Compared to the Moto E, we don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t put in a little more money and get this. You get beautifully crafted phone, much better camera, KitKat, Broadcom’s quad-core CPU and dual-SIM support. The X2 seems to fill the void of the Moto E brilliantly and we have to hand it to Lava for their impeccable timing to launch it.

We will be bringing you the full review by the end of the week so you don’t want to miss that.