Dubai
Lava’s A3 is a budget smartphone with loads of features and capabilities with a premium finish.
The 5.5-inch LCD display with Gorilla Glass 3 unibody design is powered by 1.5GHz MediaTek octa-core processor with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of ROM. The microSD card supports up to 128GB.
The dual-SIM device sports 720p (1280x720 resolution) display and not Full HD but the details and colours are crisp and clear.
It runs on Android OS V6.0 (Marshmallow) with Star OS 3.3 on the top. The user interface is not top-notch and sometimes when running three or four apps at the same time, it hangs or slows down.
The back is made of metal and houses plastic caps on the top and bottom for antennas.
Due to the curved edges, the phone easily sits on the palm and has a good amount of grip. The diamond-cut chamfered edges running across all four sides with metal rims add to the elegant look.
The device also includes smart gesture and custom gesture option for the users. Gesture feature lets users open app, wake up using motion gesture. Users can choose whether or not to display the battery percentage.
I found the rear fingerprint sensor quite fast in opening the device and it is placed just beneath the main camera. You can add up to five fingerprints. You can also click selfies when tapped on the sensors. Moreover, there is a feature to enable app encryption as well using the fingerprint scanner.
The usual proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, front-facing camera and speaker grille are placed above the display, while the bezels below the screen are plain without capacitive buttons.
At the bottom, there are two speaker grilles on either side of a microUSB port. The 3.5mm audio jack stays on top. The volume buttons are on the left, and power button plus SIM/microSD tray on the right.
The primary camera has a 13MP Sony sensor with PDAF, f/2.0 aperture and dual-LED flash. Don’t expect any extraordinary shots but in well-light conditions, it takes decent snaps with colours and details. Colours are well-saturated.
The sensors don’t play well with noise levels when shooting in lowlight conditions. Noise is visible that are shot in lowlight conditions.
The camera user interface is not that user friendly and you will have to tap a couple of times to reach the camera settings. For example, the HDR toggle is two taps away.
Besides the auto camera mode, there are two more shooting modes for easy access — Video and Beauty-Fi. The Beautify-Fi mode is for shooting enhanced portrait shots. It has four levels and works with both rear and front cameras.
It also has a toggle for flash, front/rear camera, gallery, shutter button, and several camera functions including (Extreme beauty, Night Pro, Bokeh, Filter, GIF mode, intelligent mode, Panorama, HDR, Template and much more.)
The settings option lets you access touch to capture, shutter sound, voice capture, picture size, GPS location information, Image properties and more. The device can shoot Full HD videos using rear camera but only 640x480 for the front.
The 8MP with F2.0 aperture and LED flash takes decent selfies in better light conditions but struggles in lowlight conditions.
Regarding connectivity, it supports 4G, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, hotspot, GPS, and USB-OTG.
The 3,020mAh battery gave one day of moderate use. For heavy use, involving audio/video streaming and continuous 4G connectivity, the smartphone ran up to eight hours. It has Power saver mode and a Super power saver mode to increase battery life. It takes two hours to charge to full from zero. It is priced at Dh799.
Pros
Fast fingerprint scanner
Good build quality
Good battery life
Lots of RAM and storage
Smooth overall performance
Cons
Mediocre camera
Software needs more work
Flimsy SIM tray
Price on the higher side
No NFC and quick charging
