<p style="text-align: justify;">Google had announced the Android One program last year where it promised to deliver full software support to device manufacturers who could make affordable Android smartphones with the latest updates. Moreover, Google had mentioned that these Android One smartphones will be one of the first to receive the new Android updates and there would be no data charges when one would update their smartphone in India.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">At the time of launch Google had announced three similar smartphones, all from Indian manufacturers, and other partnerships with a variety of manufacturers that had pledged to make Android One smartphones. Sadly the program has not been very successful because firstly the upgrade from Android 4.4 to Android 5.1 was delayed by almost two months and secondly the first gen devices were overshadowed by much more powerful and better feature packed smartphones.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Today a new Indian manufacturer has officially joined the Android One bandwagon by releasing their first Android One smartphone. The Lava Pixel V1 is a late entrant but comes with better hardware than the smartphones that were announced by Karbonn, Spice and Micromax last year. The Pixel V1 is the first handset from the second generation of Android One smartphones featuring the latest Android 5.1 Lollipop update, a 5.5-inch HD display with Asahi Dragon-Trail protective glass, a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB internal memory along with a microSD card expansion slot. There is also a 13MP rear and 8PM front camera combo, dual-SIM card slots and a 2,590mAh battery. The smartphone is priced at Rs. 11,349 which is again higher than the first which was priced at Rs. 6,399 lot simply because of the better hardware.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The first lot of devices were a bit of a disappointment but the Pixel V1 is a slight but decent bump in terms of hardware when compared to the first generation. But there are a lot of questions here now, like can just an update to the hardware be enough to sell this device? Will this new smartphone from Lava receive timely updates from Google this time? </p>
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