Today, Lava has made its entry to Android One initiative with the launch of Lava Pixel V1 smartphone. This smartphone will be available online exclusively via Flipkart and on all leading retailer stores. I spent few hours with the smartphone and tried to find out pros and cons. Read the article to know how was the first impression of the smartphone.
Lava Pixel V1 (Android One): First Impression
Design and Display
Design of the smartphone is good. Although, the body is of plastic but looks good. Side and back has metal like finish to make it awesome looking phone. At the back side, it also has Android One branding. It has volume rocker keys and power key at the right side. 3.5 mm audio output jack and micro-USB port are at the top side.
It has a 5.5 inch HD display with Asahi DragonTrail Glass protection. Display is good and offers good viewing angles even on low brightness.
Processor RAM and Storage
Processor and chipset of the phone disappoints me. Although, it was showing good performance and multi-tasking with 2 GB of RAM. But chipset was launched long ago, Lava could use better chipset to offer improved performance. Still, it was showing good performance. I am not sure how it will perform after 2-3 months usage.
Storage is the best part of this phone. Unlike other Android One phones, it has 32 GB internal storage and also offers microSD card slot to expand storage further up to 32 GB. Around 25 GB will user available from 32 GB internal storage.
Camera
It has a 8 MP rear camera (Interpolated to 13MP) with BSI sensor, 5P Lens, F2.0 Aperture and high intensity LED flash. I added the photo camera sample and video recording sample at the end of the post. Rear camera was taking good photos. It comes with Google camera app. But it was taking around 2 seconds in capturing photos after clicking on capture button. If you move phone in the meantime, it will not capture photo. This was the big issue I found using camera.
5 MP front camera (Interpolated to 8MP) BSI sensor, 4P Lens and F2.4 Aperture. I am not sure why, but i couldn’t take good photos with it. So In my opinion, front camera was not as per expectation.
On papers, camera specifications seems confusing because of its interpolated thing.
Software
It runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop. I do not think I should talk about it because it uses stock Android. As the smartphone is under Android One initiative, this phone will get Android updates as soon as it will be available.
Connectivity
It is a dual SIM phone but it lacks 4G LTE connectivity. This is another disappointment. At this price range, we have 4G devices in market and Indian telecom companies are also gearing to cover 4G network across the country. So, users are taking interest in 4G devices. Other connectivity features are 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and microUSB.
Battery
It is packed with removable 2650 mAh battery. Lava claims that battery will perform better than our expectation with this size battery. I also guess that battery performance is good. Because I was testing smartphone by using continuously for around 3 hours. But battery was not draining fast. I cannot say how it will perform when connected to Wi-Fi and cellular network.
Rear camera photo samples
