It seems gesture is going to be one of the big features in smartphones this year. Strong on the heels of the Samsung Galaxy S4, Lava Mobile has announced the launch of its Iris 504q smartphone with motion gesture controls. In all certainty, this is the just beginning of the smartphones which boast of gesture control, a feature which is just finding its feet at the moment and has limited use.
The phone will click pictures if you wave your hand from right to left in front of the screen, but only from right to left. The sensor is placed near the front camera. The gesture control works also on picture, video and song galleries as well as FM. It is up to the user to decide if he will just click a button to change FM stations or do an elaborate flick of the hand.
But the Iris 504q seems to have more than this feature. For one, we felt the 5-inch phone was very light weight and easy to grip. Then the IPS screen with one-glass screen (OGS) tech gives the phone a crisp display and sprightly touch. It has a 1280x720p resolution.
The 8MP camera too seems to be among the better performers in its price range, giving good results indoors. The phone is powered by a 1.2 Ghz quad-core processor with 1GB RAM and runs Android Jelly Bean. There is just 4GB internal storage, which means you will need to get a decent micro-SD card with the phone.
The Iris 504q is priced at Rs 13,499 and comes with an intelligent flip cover and on-the-go USB.
Lava International Limited is one of the top Indian mobile phone manufacturers. The company says it "realised revenues of Rs 965 crore in FY 2012". With monthly handsets sales crossing 9,00,000 units in May 2013, co-founder and director Hari Om Rai said the company was struggling to cope with the ever-increasing demand. He said the company was already the largest Indian mobile company in Nepal selling 25,000 units a month and would soon expand to other geographies. "Our vision is to become a global consumer brand out of India," he added.