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Lava, one of the many upcoming mobile phone companies in India has recently launched the Lava B8. The company is known for its mobile phones which are friendly on the pocket, yet suit users from all walks of life. The Lava B8 is no different from this with its QWERTY keypad, push messaging capabilities and a high resolution screen (for price). Read on to find out what we think about the Lava B8.
Stylish business Phone looks
Design and Build Quality It was hard not to be impressed when we unboxed the Lava B8; the design of this handset is beautiful, to say the least. This full QWERTY handset looks and feels really amazing with its smooth gun metal exterior, high resolution 2.3-inch screen, 3.2 MP camera and LED flashlight. There are shortcut keys for most features on this mobile by way of their stylishly designed volume keys which are neatly flushed on the right side of the handset; above it has a mini USB slot. On the face of the handset above the QWERTY keyboard is a super sensitive trackpad with a four-way scroll button around it.
Slim in design and very attractive
There are also designated keys for mail, home and one to make calls and end calls. The end call key doubles up as a power on / off button. In addition to this there are also two designated keys on the QWERTY keypad for Wi-Fi and the Rupee symbol. The contents of the box include a USB cable, a headset, phone charger and a user manual. Over all the design and build quality of the Lava B8 is exceptional and feels very sturdy. A noteworthy mention has to be given to the keypad that it superseded our expectations in design and input quality. Features and Performance Interface The high resolution 2.3-inch screen was a welcome sight on the Java enabled B8. With Java capabilities various mobile applications can be downloaded on this mobile handset, thereby giving more user specific options. The main screen can be set with five customizable icons and in the main menu comes preloaded with various apps. The trackpad though being super sensitive can sometimes act a little buggy and not hit the desired option you choose. One thing that struck me as odd was the Android icons on the Lava B8; mind you this is in no way an Android handset. Overall, the user interface of this phone is average because it is a little bit slow and the icon labels are not specified. Though it is marketed with a USP as 'having a business phone look'. While it may not be as fucntional as a Nokia E-5 or even a BlackBerry 8520, it's built to look as business-like as a phone can be. The Interface though could have used a little more polish.
The Lava B8 has a dual SIM capability and the performance is average in terms of call quality - there was some noticeable distortion. While on a call, I noticed that the outgoing audio was low and the person on the other end could not hear clearly even though the cellular network reception where it was tested was good. This attribute however, could be only with the handset I received.
High resolution screen an added advantage
Multimedia As mentioned earlier, the 2.3 inch high resolution screen is a great feature which the B8 possesses thus giving a good quality video output. I ran 320 x 240 resolutions Mp4, 3GP and flv videos on this phone and the quality was good. The videos played smoothly and did not take long to load. I fast forwarded the files and there was no stuttering and the playback time was quick. However, I noticed that I was unable to make use of the entire screen;Videos kept being centralised and refused to get strtech to fit the entire display, irrespective of what buttons I pressed. The option for stretching to fit didn't seem to be available.
The clarity of the audio playback on the Lava B8 is good and it can play MP3 as well as MP4 files. The audio settings can be altered through an in-built equalizer with presets as well as a customizable option that lets you adjust the bass, treble and other frequencies. There is also an option to shuffle music on this nifty handset. The Lava B8 comes with a standard 3.5 mm audio jack that lets you easily connect headphones or speakers to it.
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