Lava today unveiled the Blaze, a phone under ₹ 10,000 that doesn’t look cheap. It has a glass back, a first for the segment, according to the company. And the “free home service” definitely feels premium.
Lava blaze
The Lava Blaze runs stock Android 12 on a Helio A22 chipset. While not particularly powerful, this 12nm chip has 8 Cortex-A53 CPU cores and a PowerVR GE8300 GPU, enough resources to run thoroughbred Android (some phones in this segment resort to using the Go Edition).
MediaTek Helio A22 chipset, 3 GB of RAM and 64 GB of memory (+ microSD card slot)
The chipset is paired with 3GB of RAM (plus 3GB of virtual RAM) and 64GB of onboard storage, which can be expanded using a microSD card. Lava promises 2 years of security patches, but makes no mention of OS updates.
The Blaze has a 6.5-inch display with a resolution of 720 x 1,600 pixels. On the plus side, Lava chose an IPS LCD rather than the cheapest panel it could find. Notched into the display is an 8MP selfie camera. It can perform face unlock, albeit slowly (1.08 seconds for activation). The rear-mounted fingerprint reader is much faster (0.35s).
Moving to the rear, we find a 13 MP main camera with LED flash. Okay, there are three cameras, but since the functionality of the other two is not listed, we assume they are macro and depth sensor modules.
The phone is powered by a relatively large 5,000mAh battery that promises over 8 hours of YouTube streaming or 40 hours of talk time. Charging is done via USB-C at 10W. The other wired connection is the 3.5mm headphone jack and there’s also an FM radio receiver (we don’t see many of them).
This is a dual-SIM phone with 4G connectivity and a triple card slot (meaning you don’t have to choose between SIM2 and a microSD). However, local connectivity also includes Wi-Fi 5 (ac) and Bluetooth 5.0.
If you happen to break the display on the Blaze in the first 100 days of ownership, Lava will replace it for free. Also, if your phone needs repairs, Lava will send a technician to your home at no extra cost – you only pay for the repairs. This is the “free home service” we talked about at the beginning, it saves you the trip to the service center.
The Lava Blaze is in pre-order today on the company’s official website and on Flipkart. The price is ₹ 8,700 and open sales begin next week, July 14th.
The Lava Blaze has a glass back and is available in three colors: red, green, black and blue
PS. the first 500 customers who book a Lava Blaze will be entitled to a free pair of Lava Probuds 21 (terms and conditions apply).
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