14 DAY TRIAL // Lava Mobiles has finally put the IRIS 402e on sale in India and the smartphone comes at a very affordable price. It’s quite a decent alternative for first-time smartphone users or for those who can’t afford a more expensive Android handset.
For those unfamiliar with the Lava IRIS 402e, we reported more than two weeks ago when the smartphone made an appearance on the official website of the Indian OEM, that it might go on sale soon.
Unfortunately, it took Lava Mobiles longer than we initially anticipated to launch the IRIS 402e handset on the Indian smartphone market. The good news is the entry-level smartphone is now available for purchase via Flipkart for only Rs 4,199 ($70 / €50) outright.
Aside from the fact that it’s been priced so low, lava IRIS 402e has another advantage over other entry-level smartphones available in India, as the handset comes packed with support for 10 Indian languages.
It appears that Lava and KeyPoint Technologies strike a deal that would see the latter’s localized user-interface and multi-lingual keyboard added onto the former’s IRIS 402e smartphone.
“Localization is about being relevant to the local culture. By supporting the 10 most used Indian languages, we are convinced that Lava users will enjoy a drastically improved interaction with their smartphones” said Sumit Goswami, CEO at KeyPoint Technologies.
Keep in mind that the smartphone will display the language you choose in all apps and the whole phone’s UI (user interface). This is one of the IRIS 402e’s major selling points given the plethora of languages used in India.
Moving on to specs, Lava IRIS 402e is equipped with a less powerful 1.3GHz dual-core processor, which is complemented by 512MB of RAM and 512MB of internal memory.
Obviously, users will be able to further expand storage up to 32GB via microSD card slot. Sadly, the entry-level smartphone does not come with 3G connectivity, so users will be stuck on EDGE networks for Internet browsing.
It is also worth mentioning that IRIS 402e sports a 4-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports 480 x 800 pixels resolution. The phone offers dual-SIM capability with dual standby support, as well as other connectivity options such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microUSB and GPS with A-GPS support.
On the back, there’s a 3-megapixel photo snapper with LED flash and video recording, while in the front there’s a secondary VGA camera for selfies.
Lava IRIS 402e ships with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system out of the box and it’s powered by a 1450 mAh battery, which has yet to be rated by the manufacturer.