Lava Mobiles, who surprised us all with their Intel based offering, the powerful Lava Xolo X900 seems all set to challenge the likes of Micromax and Karbonn – both of which have been doing extremely well with their low cost, large screened phablets. As a part of this strategy, the company has just announced the Iris 501 – a large screened, sub 10k phablet.
The Iris 501 features a 5-inch display, runs Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich OS and is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor. Like its competitors, the 5 inch display gets a resolution of 480*800 pixels which is nothing great – but is acceptable having used the Micromax A110 for quite sometime. As expected, the device is dual SIM capable and is relatively well stocked when it comes to the imaging department. That said, the camera might be a let-down for you if you are very keen on the megapixel count. This one has a 5 megapixel camera as opposed to the 8 megapixel unit on the A110.
Connectivity options are aplenty with support for USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS. Lava would also offer a 4 GB microSD card with the box. It will also come preloaded with a bunch of apps that include Hike, Saavn Music, Fusion Music organizer app and the HD game from Gameloft , Asphalt HD. The 2,300 mAh battery under the hood should ideally keep it powered for an entire day of moderate usage although we will reserve a judgement only after we get a hands-on on the device.
Anyway, the arrival of the Iris 501 will make things eve more confusing for prospective low cost phablet buyers. Currently, there are phablet models from almost all the low cost phone makers in the country. Micromax has its Canvas 2 A110, iBall has its Andi 5C, Spice came up with the Stellar Horizon, Zync has the Z5 Cloud in its armour while Intex recently launched the Aqua 5.0. Also, we have Karbonn in the fray as we mentioned initially in the article. You guys might also want to take a look at Celkon C Note which we unboxed recently.
The Iris 501 has been priced at Rs. 9999. We expect the prices to drop in the coming weeks, though.
