Build Quality And Design
In a segment that is adding devices by the minute, it is imperative to pay attention to the design of your device to make it stand out. With the Lava Iris 504Q, Lava went for a simple and sleek design. No big bezel or funky colours hogwash.
At first glance, the Lava Iris 504Q is really similar to the HTC Butterfly. At the front there is a 5″ display with a HTC Butterfly like speaker grill at the top, and the proximity sensor, front-facing camera next to it. There are three touch-capacitive buttons under the screen, which are backlit and provide haptic feedback.
Towards the right of the device you have a power button, volume rockers towards the left, a microphone at the bottom and your 3.5mm headphone jack along with a micro-USB port at the top.
The slightly-curved back- cover of the device has a soft rubber like finish, even though it’s made of plastic, which gives it a really premium feel. It also makes it less prone to finger prints and scratches.
An 8 MP camera + flash, and a secondary noise-cancelling microphone grace the back of the device, which has its speaker grill towards the bottom left side. A small LAVA logo sits right in the middle of the device. Lava has managed to get a good balance of subtle branding and design to ensure the phone does not look overly flash and cheap.
With its dimensions of 140 x 73 x 8 mm and 140 Gms weight, it is really comfortable to operate.
The build quality is splendid as well, no squeaking noise, no loose parts. Everything about the Lava Iris 504Q feels downright solid. So a big thumbs up to Lava as far as build quality and design are concerned.
Specifications And Hardware
The hardware list on the Lava iris 504Q is pretty common on the market, a 5 inch 1280 x 720p screen, 1.2 GHz quad core MediaTek MT6589 processor, a mix of 8 MP and 2 MP cameras, 1 Gig of RAM and a 4 GB storage. Lava is trying various software tweaks to appeal to the market like gestures for the image gallery and clicking pictures. It is essentially a Dual-SIM GSM + CDMA smartphone.
You also get a microSD card slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, 3G, and 2000 mAh battery. Detailed tech specs are given at the top.
Display And Multimedia
The display on the Lava Iris 504Q is definitely one of the most impressive in this segment. It employs OGS (One Glass Solution) technology which basically means that there is zero gap between the screen and the glass on top of it.
With it being an iPS display, viewing angles were bound to be decent, but what impressed us most was the colour reproduction of the panel. Bright, vivid colours and deep blacks make the Lava Iris 504Q feel like a device from a segment higher than the one it is aimed for. Outdoor visibility is decent as well but the one thing that left us slightly disappointed was that Lava didn’t opt for a scratch resistant display.
Moving on to the mutli-media experience of the device, the Lava Iris 504Q has a custom Lava music player bundled along with it. The app, called Fusion, basically is a replacement for your stock music app, and provides a radio streaming option as well. If we talk about the audio quality, it is sufficiently loud and clear, but due the placement of the speakers, more often than not one tends to muffle the speaker while holding the phone.
Video playback on the Lava Iris 504Q was bound to be a joy, given its excellent display. Again, colours were rich and the phone can handle most formats including MP4, AVI, MKV and MOV. The screen size aids the multimedia experience by providing more screen real estate.
The stock browser on the Lava Iris 504Q is really impressive. Apart from smooth scrolling and zooming, it provides a host of options like offline reading and searching, which are found in Google Chrome. Text is sharp and easy to read, so overall the browsing experience is quite satisfying.
The Lava Iris 504Q’s benchmarks scores were decent. It scored above the Canvas HD in our tests. You can watch the benchmarks video below.
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Gaming on the Lava Iris 504Q was again made better thanks to its screen. It handled games like FIFA 12 and the pre-loaded Modern Combat 2 with ease.
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Camera
The Lava Iris 504Q has an 8MP camera with a BSI sensor. The camera app itself is well laid out and provides a bunch of settings and modes including HDR, Panorama, ISO settings, Exposure settings etc.
Starting with outdoor shots, the colours seemed slightly unnatural and overly saturated. The camera tends to over-expose images, and we were expecting slightly more from the Iris 504Q. Macro-shots though seemed much better. Good background blur and sharp detailing. The gesture feature, which we will talk about below, can be used to capture images as well.
Indoor shots were a big disappointment however. Even when there was a decent amount of lighting in the room, the Lava Iris 504Q clicked completely unusable images. The flash seemed too weak to aid the process of indoor imaging. So if low-light camera performance is one of your main requirements, you might want to give this one a miss.
Video recording is done at 1080p in mp4 format. While we did not find any major flaws with the quality of the video, the Lava Iris 504Q again over-exposed the shots a bit.
Network, Phone Call And Messaging
Phone call quality was very good and we have no complaints with the way the Lava Iris 504Q handles networks. The network holds good throughout the day and you will seldom find the need to wait for a network flash to get over.
The keyboard on the Lava Iris 504Q is quite similar to the stock Android keyboard. It is well laid out and can be customized according to your needs via the Google Play store.
The Lava Iris 504Q provides support for a GSM and a WCDMA SIM card. Network on both was strong throughout our tests.
Gesture Support
The Lava Iris 504Q packs in gesture support to separate itself from the herd of devices in this segment. While it may sound good on paper, we personally feel that it’s more of a gimmick than a useful addition. It does not work with all applications and when tried with the camera app, we were left searching for the option to turn it off. The Lava Iris 504Q kept clicking pictures even when we weren’t ‘swiping’ our hands in front of the display.
Conclusion
Overall, the Lava Iris 504Q is a smartphone that hopes to distinguish itself from the crowded budget smartphone market with its excellent display and simplistic design. While it may not lag behind the others as far as performance is concerned, we feel that Lava could have done a better job with the camera on the device. If you can overlook that, then the price of Rs. 13,499 seems right for the device.
Video Review
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