Lava Blaze Curve 5G Review in Five Minutes: Best Smartphone Under Rs 20,000 in India?

India's sub-20K smartphone segment is about to get a whole lot more competitive. And we have none other than the Lava Blaze Curve 5G to thank for this. It debuts as the most recent addition to Lava's Blaze series in India.

The Lava Blaze Curve 5G price in India starts from Rs 17,999. But don't be fooled by the price tag, Blaze Curve 5G packs a ton of specifications all in a sleek form factor. So without any further delays, here are our initial thoughts about the Lava Blaze Curve 5G a week in.

Design & Build

The Lava Blaze Curve 5G features a sleek design with a minimalist matte finish. The two shades include Iron Glass and Viridian Glass, our model came in the former. There's no camera island on the back, instead, the rear cameras are neatly arranged individually. The rear panel features double reinforced (Gorilla Glass 3 on AG) protection and a Lava logo on the bottom.

However, the main highlight is the curved OLED screen on the front, which also comes with glass protection. The phone's frame is made of plastic, which is unfortunate but not unexpected at this price. The Blaze Curve 5G does have a sleek design, measuring 8.8mm thick, while weighing 189 grams.

The phone has a SIM tray, speaker grille, and USB type-C port on the bottom, volume and power buttons on the right, and a snappy in-display fingerprint reader. You get a case, a USB Type-C charger, USB Type-C cable, and a USB-C to 3.5mm audio jack converter in the box. The Blaze Curve 5G boasts an elegant design and solid build.

Display

For the display, Lava has retrofitted the Blaze Curve 5G with a 6.67-inch FHD+ AMOELD display with 3D curvature and a 20:9 aspect ratio. The screen's bezels are almost non-existent, while the panel offers a peak brightness of 800 nits. The display also features a 120Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate.

You can switch between 60Hz or 120Hz or set it to Auto. The screen features respectable color reproduction and has good viewing angles. It is bright enough to use outdoors but is little hardware to use under direct sunlight. Additionally, Widevine L1 certification allows you to enough your favorite OTT content in high resolution.

The handset also packs stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support, delivering decent audio quality. The display on the Blaze Curve 5G is quite good and perfectly complements the phone's design, while the speakers enhance the overall entertainment experience.

Cameras

Moving on to optics and the Curve 5G boasts a triple-camera setup with a 64 MP Sony sensor, an 8 MP ultrawide lens, and a 2 MP macro unit. The main camera supports EIS and 4K video recording at 30fps. Up front, there's a 32 MP sensor for selfies.

In our limited time with the cameras, we noticed that the main camera did a decent job in daylight, capturing a good amount of detail. Colors are also accurate for the most part, although there's a noticeable dip in quality when switching from the main to ultrawide.

Shots taken on the ultrawide also appear to have distorted edges. The macro unit was also underwhelming in the little time we used it. At night, the Lava Blaze Curve 5G adds more light to shots, although it does require an adequate amount of ambient light. Here are a few camera samples taken on the Blaze Curve 5G.

The main camera didn't deal well with darker areas of a shot at night. Sadly, night mode is limited to the main camera. The primary sensor can do 2x optical zoom and it is safe to say Lava's 20x optical zoom claims don't really hold up as quality dips after 5x magnification. Stay tuned for our full Lava Blaze Curve 5G review for an in-depth look at camera performance.

Overall Performance

Lava has equipped the Blaze Curve 5G with a 6nm MediaTek Dimensity 7050 SoC paired with 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Additionally, up to 8GB of unused storage can be utilized as virtual RAM. The combination of a competent mid-range chip and fast RAM and storage ensures fluid multitasking.

The Blaze Curve can also handle most mobile games without any issue. We tested Call of Duty: Mobile and BGMI, which ran smoothly on high settings, although we didn't get to any sustained testing, more of that in our full Lava Blaze Curve 5G review.

In Geekbench 6, the Blaze Curve 5G managed a single-core score of 1100 points and a multi-core score of 2632 points. Additionally, Lava's claims of surpassing the 550K mark on AnTuTu was accurate. The Blaze Curve 5G packs a quite a punch, particularly for a phone that looks this good.

Unfortunately, the Blaze Curve 5G runs Android 13 out of the box, instead of the latest version of the operating system. However, Lava does promise two Android OS updates and three years of regular security updates. Moreover, the phone runs a clear version of Android 13 with no bloatware, ads, or unwanted apps. We will do a deep dive into the phone's software in our full review.

Despite its sleek appearance, the Blaze Curve 5G packs a 5,000 mAh battery that easily lasts over a day on a single charge. Speaking of charging, the Blaze Curve 5G supports 33W power delivery through a compatible adapter. The charger can fully power up the phone in 80 mins or deliver a 50% charge in just 30 minutes.

Lava Blaze Curve 5G First Impressions

Lava appears to have outdone itself yet again, following the triumph of the Agni 2 5G. Our brief experience with the Blaze Curve 5G had us impressed with the handset's potential. The Blaze Curve 5G certainly looks the part, with its sleek design and curved display. However, it is not short on substance.

Early benchmarks and gaming tests suggest the phone can deliver on the performance front. Additionally, Blaze Curve 5G also has an excellent display and set of speakers for the price. Then there's reliable battery life and bloat-free software. The only one area of skepticism for us was the cameras.

Nevertheless, Lava seems to have excelled in various aspects here. The impressive specifications on paper undeniably result in robust real-world performance, positioning the Lava Blaze Curve 5G as one of the best smartphones under Rs 20,000 in India and earning it a straightforward recommendation in our assessment. But stay tuned for our full Lava Blaze Curve review for more details on performance, camera quality, and software capabilities.