The Lava Iris Pro 30 is the first handset in the Iris Pro series. This handset houses the 1.2GHz MT6589 chipset and sports a 4.7 inch screen with HD resolution. The key highlight is its gorgeous look, handset is slim and light weight – priced at under Rs. 16,000.

Pro 30 Box pack
Inside the box you will find the handset, charger, data cable, earphone, user manual and warranty card. A free screen guard is also includes which is really not required as it’s clearly mentioned on the box pack that the screen is with corning gorilla glass protection.

OS, Design and Display
The lava Iris Pro 30 sails on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean OS. Pro 30 is all about the looks. The build quality and finishing is excellent and the ‘almost black’ front OGS glass adds up to the elegant and premium look.

lava iris pro 30 box pack

The handset is light weight at 115 grams with battery. It is 7.91mm thick, breadth is 66.88mm and the length is 137.97mm. The rear side is matte finish with greyish texture – very good grip. The front side is pure black and the sides are greyish black metallic color.

The power button and volume rockers are placed on the right, 3.5mm audio jack on the top and micro USB port along with the mic at the bottom.

lava pro 30 buttons

The screen is 4.7 inches supporting resolution of 1280×720 pixels (312ppi). The Iris Pro 30 is using the Sharp OGS screen technology with content adaptive backlight control and corning gorilla glass protection. Viewing angles are pretty good, touch is smooth and responsive. There are accelerometer, light, magnetic and proximity sensors. There is LED notification too.

This is a dual SIM handset (normal SIM slot + micro SIM slot) with dual standby mode.

Memory and Storage
The handset comes with 1GB RAM and 4GB internal storage plus micro SD card support of up to 32GB. 1.3GB is space for apps, 0.98GB  is the phone storage and free RAM is 613MB on first boot. OTG is supported and you can install / move selected app on the external storage.

lava iris pro 30 unboxing

Performance
Its old wine in new bottle – 1.2GHz MT6589 processor with PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU. The same hardware that powered the Lava Iris 504q and Micromax A116 HD.

Benchmark scores

  • Quadrant Standard – 4042.
  • AnTuTu – 13881.
  • Vellamo – HTML5 1443, Metal 447.
  • Nenamark 2 – 44.9 fps
  • Multi touch : 10 points.

Gaming and Entertainment
I installed the MC4 (Modern Combat 4) and Asphalt 8 on the external storage. Game play was smooth. MC4 did well and as for Asphalt 8 it worked better when the visual quality was set to low.

You can play full HD videos in both H/W and S/W modes.

8MP AF Camera
There is rear camera of 8MP resolution and front camera of 3MP resolution. The camera quality is below average. You can check the sample images. The full HD video recording was good enough. The rear camera is with dual LED flash seems to brighten up the subject too much. When using the dual LED flash in low light environment you might want to step a little away to get decent quality pictures.

lava iris pro 30 8mp AF camera

Others
Sound is loud / clear. I got the GPS lock within 30 seconds. 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth worked well without any issues.

Pro 30 Battery
The Lava Iris Pro 30 comes with non-removable battery of 2000 mAh (Li-po) capacity. It is possible to remove the battery but it’s clearly mentioned that doing so will void the warranty. The benchmark apps ran for around 21 minutes –battery dropped by 6% and when I played some high end games for about 15 minutes the battery dropped by 6%. The max temperature was 37 degrees.

2000 mAh non removable battery on pro 30

Verdict
Lava Iris Pro series were supposed to be launched in 2013, had the Pro 30 been launched then, it would have done well. For now the Pro 30 houses 1.2GHz quad core processor with unique features for a price tag of approx Rs. 15,500. This seems too much as 1.5GHz MT6589T is available for a lower price. Moreover the octa cores that will soon flood the market are priced at 18K and over.

Though the handset has got a premium look and is light weight, it may or may not tempt the users, only time will tell. There are powerful handsets available for a lower price but if you are looking for style/class the the Lava Iris Pro 30 could enchant you.

Image Gallery

Sample Images

Lava Iris Pro 30 unboxing and review

Full HD video shot using the Pro 30 handset

Modern Combat 4 and Asphalt 8 on Pro 30


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By Rajeev Rana

Founder and Chief Editor - gogi.in