Lava V5 review: Lightweight, slim and easy to handle

Domestic handset maker Lava has launched another budget smartphone, V5. The smartphne is priced at Rs 11,499.

The newly launched device comes with pretty standard specifications in the over-crowded budget smartphone segment. The 5.5-inch display smartphone carries a quad-core processor and a 13MP rear camera.

Looks

The Lava V5 smartphone is a big phone with a 5.5-inch display, but in spite of that it will not slip out of your hand easily. The plastic back cover gives the device a good grip and the metal rim gives a premium finish. The smartphone features curved edges, is quite slim and easy on the hands.

The volume and power keys are placed at the right edge while the 3.5mm port and micro-USB port are fixed at the top. The back has a camera lens, LED flash, speaker grill and the branding. The plastic rear panel is removable, which reveals two micro sim card slots, and a microSD card slot along with a removable battery.

The front of the device houses an 8MP selfie camera and an LED flash. There are also three Android buttons on the screen to move through home, options and return functions. The rear panel sports a 13MP rear camera accompanied with dual LED flash and a speaker grille at the bottom.

Display

The V5 sports a 5.5-inch HD display with 1280x720 pixels resolution and is protected with a coating of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 (protecting it from scratch and damage). The display has a decent pixel density and the colour reproduction is also sharp with good viewing angles. It offers good visibility under bright sunlight.

Performance

Performance wise, the Lava V5 works smooth. It is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor. The 3GB RAM gives an edge over other smartphone and glides through your everyday requirements. The phone offers a 16GB onboard storage where only 11.23GB is available for users. The external storage can also be expanded up to 32GB using a microSD card. 

The device runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system that will get an Android 6.0 Marshmallow update soon. Lava has its own customised user interface called Star OS 2.0., which is clean and easy to use. Though the UI has some additions such as gesture control and smart wake up. Gesture control helps you interact with the phone with just a flip to mute, shake the phone to answer incoming calls, slide fingers to capture screenshots and more.

Apart from that, the smart wake up lets you launch apps directly through the lock screen. For instance, you can draw 'M' to open music player or 'e' to start flash light. While using these gestures were not very smooth and we encountered difficulty while using them. Though we did not experience any lag while navigating through the menu, browsing the web and scrolling inside apps.

Moving on to the sound, the external speaker offers loud sound output with average quality. The outlet is located at the back so the sound gets muffled when the phone lies at its back. But the sound through the headphones and call quality was good.

Camera

The device comes equipped with a 13MP rear camera with dual LED flash and an 8MP front with LED flash for selfies and low light photography. Lava claims that the camera is the main highlight of the smartphone, but there is nothing special with the performance. The images captured during the day were pretty decent with the 13MP camera and the colour reproduction was also quite sharp. But the images captured indoor and low light conditions was not that impressive. The photos had too much noise. However the camera app offers various modes such as HDR, multi-angle view, GIF mode and others.

Then when we checked the 8MP front camera the LED flash in the front, which was bossed so much by the company, is not of much help, and the low-light selfies are blur and full of colour saturation. Lava has integrated some beautification features for selfies, which work fine.

Battery

As for the battery, the smartphone is loaded with 3000mAh battery. The dual-SIM smartphone last through the day if the usage is minimal. A full charge can keep the phone going for 7-8 hours with phone calls, gaming, videos, web browsing and messaging. The device comes with several preloaded apps and on connectivity font it supports 4G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Verdict

The Lava V5 4G comes with a price tag of Rs 11,499 and if the performance is concerned the handset is pretty decent. Though the camera is a major setback, which is a little disappointing. The V5 has some tough competition in the budget category who can deliver better performance like Lenovo K3 Note, Moto G Turbo Edition and the Xiaomi Mi4i.  You can also opt for Coolpad Note 3, which is cheaper, at Rs. 8,999, also with a fingerprint scanner.

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Source: Lava V5 review: Lightweight, slim and easy to handle