Agni 3 Review: Lava Reaches For The Stars, Delivers A Holistic Experience
MediaTek Dimensity 7300X processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage, Android 14 out of the box, a multipurpose action button and a 50MP primary Sony sensor
Lava International’s products come with an added tag of national pride. However, as a journalist, I need to be unbiased and I’ll try my best to do so. The Lava Agni 3 is a phone that strikes the eye from the get-go. The all-plastic build manages to give a very premium vibe. The curved AMOLED display, the new hot thing in mid-range smartphones does its best to give the smartphone an uber-cool appearance. The show stealer, however, is the second display at the back adjoining the camera unit. The 1.74-inch AMOLED display is a feature no one really asked for, to be honest. However, it is one of those features that makes life easier for users.
Upon unboxing the Lava Agni 3, we get the following things –
The Lava Agni 3 is a fabulous-looking device that proudly carries the flagship tag for the company. Apart from the 6.78-inch curved AMOLED display, the curved edges and the broad camera unit, which also contains the secondary display or Insta Display, the phone also has sleek buttons, a matte finish back panel, a metallic rim and an on-display fingerprint sensor.
Apart from feeling premium, the phone feels heavy as well. Weighing at around 212 grams, the Agni 3 is definitely on the heavier side of the scale. That being said, it is extremely well-balanced. Most importantly, it does not wobble when placed in a camera facing down position.
The power button and the multi-purpose action button are on the right side. Meanwhile, the volume rocker is on the left side. At the bottom, we have the speaker grill, the USB C port, the dual SIM slot and the mic. At the top, we have DolbyAtmos imprinted, the speaker grill and the second mic.
The 1.5K AMOLED display is simply phenomenal. The colours it reproduces are just too good in my opinion. For a phone manufacturer that was nowhere in the smartphone scene a couple of years back, this is incredible delivery. With a peak brightness of 1,200 and a 120Hz refresh rate, the display is great for watching content, browsing through social media and photo editing.
The Lava Agni 3 cameras were under extreme scrutiny while I used the smartphone as a daily driver. The 50MP Sony sensor was especially mentioned multiple times during the launch event at Delhi’s Talkatora Stadium and I wanted to check if the cameras stood their ground when put to actual use.
The primary camera takes some good photos in broad daylight. The colours are decent, saturation is just where it should be and the shadows and highlights are just about right. There is definitely scope for improvement, though. The photos are not as sharp as I would have wanted and there is always a constant need to adjust the exposure.
The ultrawide lens in the Agni 3 is underwhelming and there’s no two ways about it. Daytime photographs are fine as there is ample detail but the moment there is a lack of sufficient lighting, the ultrawide camera starts showing its flaws.
The telephoto lens is a nifty addition to this unit and it does the task that is assigned to it. The photographs are better than I expected but they do not meet the industry standard for a 3x telephoto lens.
Camera is one department that Lava really needs to work on if it is serious about getting a chunk of the mid-range smartphone segment. With competitors offering better camera specs, Lava needs to buckle up and improve its camera capabilities.
The Lava Agni 3 is a very interesting smartphone in the sense that not only it packs a very holistic punch but it also manages to give a little something extra. Performance isn’t always about synthetic benchmarks. Yes, they are important as they let us know how the phone processes information and how fast can it do so. However, it is also important to judge a smartphone’s performance from an overall perspective as well.
The Agni 3 houses the MediaTek Dimensity 7300X SoC which offers a peak speed of 2.5GHz which isn’t a lot, to be honest. Despite that, the 4nm octa-core processor manages to offer great performance. Even demanding games like Wuthering Waves run on ultra-high settings without lagging. Many of you might be wondering what is the difference between the Dimensity 7300 (found in the CMF Phone 1) and the Dimensity 7300X. Well, the only difference is that the D7300X supports dual displays.
The Mali G77 GPU is potent and can deliver good graphics performance on demand.
In terms of benchmarking, we tested the Agni 3 on fairly popular platforms like Geekbench, 3Dmark and CPU Throttling, all of which are easily available on the Play Store. Here are the results:
Geekbench -
3Dmark -
CPU Throttling -
The good thing about the Lava Agni 3 smartphone is that it comes with an almost stock Android experience. I’ve compared the Agni 3 UI with the Pixel 9 Pro XL Ui below. It’s almost identical.
This means that there is no bloatware as well. The user interface is smooth and intuitive. It is easy to navigate through the menu and from app to app. There is no in-built gallery app or file explorer which is a problem raised by many journalists. However, I do not see this as a problem as this is applicable to almost all phones that offer this kind of stock Android experience. The Play Store has Google’s own gallery and explorer apps which work fine.
Lava’s Agni 3 houses a 5,000mAh battery that is an absolute war horse. This battery goes all day long without any hassle. Power-user or not, the phone will go a full day without causing you trouble. The 66W charger does a fairly good job of charging the device too. It’ll take users approximately a little less than an hour to fully charge the Agni 3 smartphone (if charging from zero).
Was the telephoto lens necessary?
Providing a 3x telephoto lens at a base price of Rs 20,000 is anything but predictable. The fact that Lava offered this feature means that they are serious about gaining as much market as possible in the mid-range segment. However, the 3x telephoto lens barely meets the mark. It is great for getting those close-ups but one should not expect flagship-quality results. Instead of this, could Lava have provided a better ultrawide camera with better low-light performance? Something that its competition like the Nothing Phone 2a and OnePlus Nord CE 4 have done.
Could the Insta Display have been made more functional?
The secondary ‘Insta Display’, as Lava calls it, could have been better. The display is great for camera stuff. I recorded a lot of videos for BWTV on the back camera of the Lava Agni 3 using the 1.74-inch AMOLED display at the back but it is fairly limited when it comes to other functions. Be it notifications, the heath tracker or the music control, the phone asks you to go back to the primary display. Of course, features like the stopwatch, timer and camera work pretty smoothly. The voice recorder app in the back display is also a boon for someone like me who takes interviews every now and then. That being said, it does go without saying that the second display could have been made more functional and I hope Lava will work on this.
Could they have stuck to a higher standard of quality?
The idea of an action button or ‘Action Key’ as Lava calls it is a good one. Personally, I have set this key in ways that it helps make my life easier on a daily basis. A single click leads to the camera app while a double click takes a screenshot (really useful for capturing interesting posts on LinkedIn and Instagram). Meanwhile, the tap-and-hold gesture is set to switch between silent and ringer modes. This is probably one of the most genuinely functional features in the entire smartphone ecosystem today. I honestly do not care that they copied it from Apple as it makes my life a lot easier at a price point that won’t keep me up at night. That being said, the quality of the buttons is disappointing. The Action Key as well as the power button are both very flimsy. I really hope Lava takes note of this.
Our tests on the Lava Agni 3, in addition to the everyday use of the phone and putting it to realistic scenarios, have told us that it is the best device that the Indian smartphone company has created to date.
However, is it good enough when it is stacked against the competition? The answer to this question is yes. As mentioned earlier, the Agni 3 offers a very fascinating package that caters to almost all the needs of smartphone users. With functionality and ease of use at the centre, Lava has created a product that tries to leave no stone unturned.
Another service to be considered here is the door-to-door servicing that Lava offers. As per Executive Director Sunil Raina's opening address during the launch of the Agni 3, the company wants to make it easier for customers to get proper service. This factor alone makes the phone all the more lucrative, in my opinion.
At a price tag of Rs Rs 24,999 (8GB + 256GB variant on ecommerce sites), the Agni 3 is a lucrative smartphone and if functionality and performance is your primary concern, it is worth a shot.
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