It’s only been a few days since the LYF flame-8 handset was launched by Reliance Retail which is exclusively available on Flipkart for a price tag of Rs. 4,199. We got ourselves early access to the device and decided to review it.
The phone sports a 4.5-inch FWVGA IPS display with a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels, the colours are vivid with adequate saturation though the display is not as crisp as screens with higher resolution. The Flame 8 houses a 1.1GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 (MSM8909) chipset clubbed with Adreno 304 GPU and 1GB of RAM, in our testing the apps opened smoothly, there was no lag or hanging, even the transitions in animation were smooth. The 8GB internal storage does seem a bit less, but the fact that it is expandable up to 128GB via microSD card makes the deal sweeter.
Out of the box, the phone runs Android Lollipop 5.1 but will soon receive an OTA update to Marshmallow. The OS is mostly stock Android interface and only comes with the Jio apps pre-installed but even those can be uninstalled should you ever feel the need to. The flame 8 has an 8MP rear camera with LED Flash and 5MP front-facing camera with face recognition technology, the photos clicked are of good resolution with focus on detail. The phone is dual-SIM enabled with Sim 1 supporting 4G LTE, 3G, 2G and Sim 2 supporting only 2G. The 2000mAh battery gives the phone a decent standby time.
The Lyf Flame 8 comes with the Jio preview offer which gives unlimited access to HD voice and Video calling, unlimited texting and unlimited 4G LTE data along with unrestricted access to the entire Jio digital suite of apps including Jio play, Jio on demand, Jio beats, Jio Express News, Jio Money, Jio drive, Jio security, etc; for a period of 90 days from the date of activation. When we tested the data speed using the NetVelocity app, we got around 26 Mbps download and 9 Mbps upload speeds with an 8 Ms ping in Mumbai.
The phone specs may not be the best in its current price segment but the phone does pack in its fair share of power and performance. The Jio preview offer ensures that the deal more than justifies its price tag. We expect a further dip in price post commercial launch of Jio.
