LAVA V5 4G
LAVA V5 4G

LAVA recently launched its latest flagship smartphone i.e. LAVA V5 4G and has tied big hopes around it, as they have worked a lot this time on the camera & user experience. Having a good camera in a mid-budget phone plays a leading role these days in the buying decision of consumers, hence LAVA saw that an opportunity in providing a phone with great camera in competition to Lenovo K4 Note, LeEco Le 1s or CoolPad Note 3 which doesn’t have great cameras. LAVA also has a strong offline presence which is a plus point for them, and that helped them to be among top 5 smartphone sellers in India and with its active participation in Make in India & Digital India initiatives, LAVA is a serious competitor for many.

LAVA V5 4G Phone Features

Camera

Like i said above, this is the correct time for any phone manufacturer to take out a phone with superb camera at mid-budget range when other competitors are more focused in providing only specs. Camera performance is something which gets thumbs up or down in daily general usage and any camera phone taking disappointing images get listed to OLX very soon. Suppose you went on a trip in a group and your smartphone is not able to take good pictures, nothing can be more embarrassing than that, hence a consumer must be super conscious in checking camera capabilities too along with other specs like Processor, RAM or Display.

Lava V5 Camera

LAVA V5 4G phone comes with a 13MP primary camera with 3M2 ISOCELL Samsung sensor and PDAF (phase detection autofocus) which focus on the object within 0.18 sec automatically to capture the perfect shot of any moving object. ISOCELL technology is something which Samsung developed for their flagship phone camera sensors. This technology isolates each pixel by using physical barriers around them to prevent the light from entering through the sensor from scattering. This is why LAVA V5 captures great images every time in any situation. With a 5 layer, Largan Lens with blue glass filter & F2.0 aperture with dual LED flash, the camera of this phone is capable of taking indoor and low light photos too with great quality.

Looking at secondary camera, it’s 8 MP Selfie Camera with 4 Layer Largan Lens with 84-degree wide angle lens. With F2.2 Aperture with LED Flash too, you can take a perfect selfie even at night or take great outdoor party groupies or pictures without worrying about lighting conditions.

Other than that there are features which support the claim of a selfie camera are MagicPix which supports face slimming, smoothing, eye widening and whitening. Other than other my favourite feature i.e. Pic Focus, which focus on a targeted subject and blurs the background, those pictures just look completely fabulous. And lastly, there are features like Wide Selfie, Night Pro and GIF mode which is similar to what Apple calls Live photos.

Display, Design and Build Quality

LAVA V5 has a 5.5 inch HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection and has close-to premium looks. Colour reproduction and brightness level of the screen is good, so is the visibility under the Sun. Although the glass is a bit glossy and attracts smudges, hence having a screen guard or a tempered glass is recommended. Also, the display delivers great viewing angles.

Lava V5 Front

The volume rocker and power buttons are at the right edge of the phone. 3.5mm audio jack is at top and micro-USB port is at the bottom of the phone.

Lava V5 Right Edge

At the back, there’s a primary camera with LAVA branding at the centre and speaker grilles are at the bottom.

Lava V5 Back Branding

Upon removing the back panel, you’ll find dual SIM and MicroSD cards slots with a removable 3000 mAh battery.

The grip on the phone is good because of the metallic edges around and the way it’s built. It’s a strong and sturdy phone and would last long even with heavy usage.

Hardware & Software

Well, every manufacturer has to offer something more than others, hence LAVA V5 supports 4G at both SIM slots along with with CAT4 4G LTE and VoLTE support which can be upgraded by FOTA (Firmware Over-The-Air). That explains that the company wants to tap into the growing market of 4G driven by upcoming Reliance Jio’s VoLTE network. It’s a win-win situation for both the company and the consumer.

Lava V5

On the software part, it runs on a customized OS Star 2.0 with the base of Android 5.1 Lollipop and LAVA has guaranteed that this phone will get an upgrade to Android 6.0 Marshmallow. LAVA V5 4G is powered by 1.3GHz MediaTek Quad-core 64-Bit processor with 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM. Internal storage capacity is of 16 GB (11.23 GB available to user), which further supports expandable microSD card up to 32 GB.

You’ll find the phone taking multi-tasking operations smoothly and 3 GB RAM is good enough to operate multiple apps at a time without getting them killed at the background which is a good thing.

Battery

With 3000 mAh Li-polymer battery, the company has claimed to have a talk time on 2G or 27 hours and of 14 hours on 3G. However, if you enable the power saver mode of the phone, standby time on both networks i.e. on 2G & 3G increases to 260 hours. Basically, with power saver mode, the phone would be restricted to phone calls and SMS only which is pretty useful when you have a dying battery with charge capacity less than 10%.

Final Verdict

LAVA is the number 1 smartphone company in Thailand and has a decent market-share in India online and offline. And their offering, LAVA V5 is a good smartphone for its price, offers value for money. However, this phone is going to face some competition online but will do maintain its dominance at offline markets. This phone is surely going to have good sales when Reliance Jio’s VoLTE networks would be fully operational and that time is not that far & it would attract a good percentage of camera enthusiastic too, those who know the importance of having a good camera smartphone.

An optimist to the core, I always see the glass half full. I like to take life as it comes and not to become too serious on the harsher aspects of it. Apart from this, I am an Engineer, a Blogger & a Researcher....

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