Lava Iris X1 review: Better specs than Moto E, but lacks user experience

The first of many ‘Moto E killers’ to come our way, Lava’s Iris X1 is a promising smartphone which could very well be the best Android under Rs 10,000 right now. This spot is currently taken by **Motorola’s Moto E**, which despite its underwhelming camera, has garnered much praise by everyone, including us.

There is one problem however. Getting your hands on a Moto E is next to impossible since the phone has been out of stock for a while and there’s no telling if Flipkart can keep up with the demand. To fill the void, XOLO, Lava and Micromax have all announced Moto E-like specifications for around the same price. The feature set is also slightly better than the Moto E, at least on paper.

So how good is the Lava Iris X1? Can it exceed the high expectations set by the Moto E? Let’s find out.

Design and Build

The Lava Iris X1 is based on the same design as the Iris Pro 30, a phone **we loved very much**. It might resemble the iPhone 4 or 5, and that’s because many design cues were taken from Apple, but the end product is engineered well. The phone feels extremely sturdy and very well put together.

The buttons on the sides are ergonomically placed and have good tactile feedback. All the ports are placed at the top. The 4.5-inch display has a slim bezel on the sides but quite a bit on the top and bottom. This makes the phone quite a bit longer when compared to the **Moto E**.

Up top, we have a proximity and ambient light sensor and a notification LED. There’s even a front-facing 2MP camera. The back cover easily snaps off to reveal a full sized SIM slot (for 3G) and a micro SIM slot (for 2G). There’s a microSD card slot in between which can accept 64GB cards as well.

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Overall, we’re impressed with the quality of build and craftsmanship on the X1. The phone feels premium and well put together. It’s not as rugged as the Moto E but it should easily sustain the brunt of everyday use. The phone also comes with a good bundle, which includes a screen protector and flip cover, along with the usual accessories.

Features

The 4.5-inch IPS display sports a resolution of 854 x 480, which is lower than the qHD resolution on the **Moto E**. The increased screen size and lower resolution is immediately noticeable when placed side by side. The X1 has good viewing angles and colour reproduction is pretty accurate as well, however, the display lacks sharpness. Images and icons aren’t as crisp as we’d like and slight colour banding is noticeable in gray backgrounds and videos.

The sensitivity of the display also seems amiss somewhat. It’s not very accurate, especially when you’re typing quickly. We faced this with the stock keyboard as well as SwiftKey. It tends to lag quite a bit when you pull up the keyboard to type. The glass protecting the panel isn’t scratch resistant either.

The Lava Iris X1 is powered by a Broadcom (BCM23550) quad-core chipset, running at 1.2GHz. There’s even 1GB of RAM to accompany it. Since the X1 runs mostly stock Android 4.4.2 KitKat, there’s about 500MB of RAM that’s free at any time for apps.

The X1 runs pretty smoothly for the most part, however, we wished the screen was a bit more sensitive to touch. The phone also froze once or twice during our week’s usage, forcing us to remove the battery and hard reboot it.

Media

We have the stock audio and video player for media playback. There’s FM radio present as well. The loud speaker quality is pretty good for alerts or even music. You get 4GB of onboard storage, out of which, about 1.3GB is available for use. You will need a microSD card for apps and media. You also need to manually change the default storage as it doesn’t do it automatically.

Connectivity

The Lava Iris X1 supports 2G and 3G depending on which slot you insert your card in. You also get Wi-Fi ‘n’, Bluetooth v4.0, USB OTG support and GPS. There’s no NFC or GLONASS however. We didn’t have any issues with call quality on the X1.

Camera

The 8MP BSI sensor on the X1 captures very good pictures, considering the price. The image quality for indoors and outdoors is pretty good and it manages pretty good macros. The dual LED flash is quite powerful as well and should help in pitch dark situations. We liked the fact that the auto-focus speed is pretty quick.

Battery life

The 1800mAh battery managed to complete our 8-hour test with about 17 percent to spare. This means, you should easily be able to get through a full day without having to charge.

Verdict and Price in India

The Lava Iris X is priced at Rs 7,999 and is only available via Amazon for now. Ironically, the ‘Moto E’ killer only seems to be coming in stock on the 5th of June, while the Moto E is back in stock right now (Update: It’s out of stock **again**!) . For a thousand bucks more, the Lava Iris X1 does offer a lot more features to warrant this bump in price. It has a bigger display, a front facing camera and a much better rear camera with dual LED flash. In terms of hardware, the X1 and the Moto E are more or less on par, despite the latter only having a dual-core CPU.

However, in terms of user experience, the X1 is still no match for the Moto E. Even though both phones run stock Android KitKat with 1GB RAM, the X1 lags quite a bit in day to day operations. Simple tasks like typing out a message or multi-tasking can get quite sluggish. This is something we never experienced with the Moto E.

If you want a well built and good looking phone with better features than the Moto E, then the X1 is good option. But remember, that you’ll have to live with a bit of sluggishness for some of the simplest tasks. You should also consider the XOLO Q600s and the Micromax Unite 2, which have similar features as the X1, and retail for around the same price.

And we can now safely say the **Moto E** is your best bet as far as delivering the best Android experience in this segment.