At a time when most smartphones struggle to last single day of use without requiring a charger, Lava, the home-grown smartphone brand, has come up with a budget smartphone -- the Iris Fuel 60-- that provides a gargantuan battery backup.
But can a bigger battery put a smartphone ahead of its peers? How does the Fuel 60 perform on other aspects? We find out...
Design and build quality
The
Iris Fuel 60 is a simple and bar-shaped smartphone. Actually it is
quite boring and at first glance you may not notice anything of
significance in it . It also comes across as heavy, bulky smartphone,
due to the big battery inside it. The Iris Fuel 60 is thick at 10.2mm
and weighs a hefty 174 grams. Though this design is very much a conscious decision on the part of Lava. It is a phone that needs to house a big battery module. Guess you can't have the best of everything. Compromises have to be made and in the Fuel 60, the compromise has been made on the design part.
The back cover is removable. It is also slightly curved, which provides a better grip when you are holding the phone. Despite being an all plastic smartphone, the Fuel 60, with its black tinge and subtle matte grip at the back doesn't feel cheap.
The volume rocker and power keys are placed at the right edge while the 3.5mm port and micro USB port sit at the top. The back features a camera lens, LED flash, speaker grill and a subtle branding. Overall, Lava has done a decent job in the design department.
Removing the cover reveals two regular SIM card slots and a microSD card slot along with a sealed battery. Yes, you can't remove the battery. Lava says that the display has Corning Gorilla Glass cover but it does collect a lot of smudges, something that you won't like.
Display
The
Fuel 60 has a 5-inch screen with a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels. For
the price, this is a good enough display. It shows colours that have
good contrast. The text appears clear and viewing angles are good. The
touch responsiveness of the screen is less than optimal, especially
compared to devices like the Motorola Moto E. Also, the display is very
reflective and that affects the sunlight legibility. Three capacitive
keys for navigation are placed below the display, which light up only
when you touch them.Software
The smartphone uses Android 4.4.2 KitKat OS, and the user interface is very close to stock Android version. But there are a few gesture control features that add to the usability of the phone.
Lava has claimed the smartphone will be upgradable to Android Lollipop but hasn't provided a timeframe for the rollout. The good thing is that this smartphone comes without any bloatware, which means there aren't any third-party apps pre-installed on the smartphone, giving you more free space.
The quick settings menu seems like any other Android smartphone, but offers a MemClear soft button, which clears unused memory. This smartphone features a MediaTek processor has HotKnot feature. The HotKnot feature functions like NFC, but only by switching on the displays of the phone. We tried the feature a couple of times, and it seemed seamlessly, though data is transferred at a slower rate compared to NFC. There are also gesture controls that help in controlling the camera, audio and gallery.
Camera
The smartphone has a 10-megapixel primary camera with a BSII sensor, and a 2MP secondary camera. Despite the big sensor size on the primary camera, the picture quality is not all that good. Under the sunlight and with decent exposure, the camera takes nice pictures, but we have seen better.
The primary camera also offers Full-HD video capture capability and the videos taken in this mode were satisfactory. The 2MP secondary camera stands tall for taking selfies and video calls. The shutter speed is decent.
Check the following image samples to get an idea of Lava Iris Fuel 60 Camera performance: Sample 1, Sample 2, Sample 3, Sample4.
Performance
This smartphone is powered by a 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6582 quad-core processor and 1GB RAM.In general, we found the performance satisfactory. Navigating menu, launching apps and web-browsing was lag-free. The phone comes with a 8GB internal memory, and the memory is expandable to 32GB with a microSD card. Though memory can be expanded to bigger capacities these days, the 32GB capability is decent enough.
The call quality was really good, and we were able to get good reception on the smartphone even in the areas where connectivity seemed to be troublesome. The built-in speakers offers decent, clear output. However, its placement at the back could lead to muffled output at times, when the phone lies at its back, or is in the pocket.
Battery
The
phone's USP is its big battery. In actual use we did that find that the
4000 mAh battery inside the Lava 60 can keep it chugging for nearly two
days. With lots of calls, web-surfing, gaming and video streaming, one can easily squeeze in two days of battery life from the Lava 60 -- a feat that will make you give those power banks and USB chargers a rest. In the battery benchmark with the PC Mark, we got a score of nearly 10 hours! This is phenomenal. Phones like the Nexus 5 get around 4 hours in the same benchmark. Even phones with good battery such as the Galaxy Note 4 get little over 6 hours in this benchmark.
Should you buy it
The
Lava Iris Fuel 60 is a decent budget smartphones. It has a few
weaknesses. And it is definitely not in the league of the Yu Yureka or
the RedMi Note. But it has one killer feature -- big battery life. There
are other smartphones which do offer similar, or even better -- Gionee
Marathon M3 is an example -- battery backup, but the Fuel 60 is a clear
winner with its attractive pricing, adequate spec-sheet and looks. With an asking price of Rs.8,888, we feel that Fuel 60 could be a phone that you can buy if you absolutely need best battery life. Though at the same time, the RedMi Note 4G, which sells for similar price, too has a good battery life and is a better package overall than the Fuel 60.
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