Lava Agni 3 review

The Lava Agni 3 is, for the most part, your regular candy bar smartphone. It has a decent-sized 6.78-inch AMOLED display, slim borders, and curved edges, along with a slim and comfortable overall hand feel. At the back is a smooth texture for the body, the triple-camera module, and the 1.74-inch rear display - but more on that later in this review.

Perhaps the only major difference between the Lava Agni 3 and most other smartphones in the same price segment (apart from that rear screen) is the presence of an additional button on the side of the phone. The power and volume buttons are joined by a customisable action button, which can be set to activate specific functions when pressed. 

 

 

 

 

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You can set up single, double, or long-press actions, with the list of possibilities including changing the ring mode, turning on the flashlight, opening a specific app, or taking a screenshot, among others. It also works as a shutter button for the camera. I did, however, turn off any single-press functionality for this, given how easy it was to mistake it for the power button.

The main 6.78-inch AMOLED 1.5K (2652x1200-pixel) display of the Lava Agni 3 is fairly standard as far as smartphones priced at around Rs. 20,000 go. It’s big, sharp, and does what it’s supposed to do, and the fingerprint sensor is built into it as well - pretty much normal as far as smartphones go.

Flip the phone over, and that’s the stand-out feature of the Lava Agni 3. The 1.74-inch second display sits alongside the camera module and can be activated with a double tap. Called the Instascreen or Mini Screen, it can be set to show the time and either the wallpaper set on your smartphone, or Lava’s own animated dog mascot called ‘Firey’. It’s actually a cute touch that makes the mini screen a bit more fun to use.

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Coming to the actual use cases of the mini screen, there are a handful; whether most of them are actually useful or not is really your own opinion. The use-case that I found most useful is the camera viewfinder, which lets you use the superior rear-camera system for selfies. You can use it to take photos, portrait shots, or video. It’s a sharp and bright screen, and this obviously helps in framing pictures nicely before capture.

Other widgets that can be used on the back screen include music controls, fitness tracking stats, voice recorder, stopwatch, alarm, and timers. Obviously these are useful to have if you like to keep your smartphone face down most of the time, but all of these functions are just as easily usable with the phone face up…

All things considered, the Lava Agni 3 is a mid-range smartphone, and doesn’t really hide from that tag either. It’s powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7300X SoC, and runs on Android 14. The user interface is a pleasantly light and stock-like in its appearance, with only a handful of additional apps - most of which are actually fairly useful. 

The variant you buy not only decides how much RAM and storage you get, but also the accessories that come in the box. The base variant for Rs. 20,999 gets 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but no charging adapter in the sales package - just the USB Type-C cable. For Rs. 22,999, you get a charger in the box in addition to the above, and for Rs. 24,999, you get 256GB of internal storage as well.

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The Lava Agni 3 is compatible with 66W fast wired charging for its 5000mAh battery, and the phone gets IP64 dust and water resistance. The device also touts gaming-focused features such as LPDDR5 RAM, UFS 3.1 storage, vapour chamber cooling for thermal management, and Dolby Atmos support for its speaker system. Other key features include 5G connectivity, Bluetooth 5.4, Wi-Fi 6e support, and a promise of software updates up to Android 17.

The Lava Agni 3 has a triple-camera setup at the back, with a 50-megapixel primary camera, and two additional 8-megapixel sensors for telephoto and ultra-wide capabilities. At the front is a single 16-megapixel shooter. The telephoto camera at the back can do 3X optical zoom, while the main 50-megapixel camera gets optical image stabilisation. 

The rear camera system is alright as far as typical cameras in this price range go, getting standard photography right much of the time. I didn’t have any trouble with sharpness and framing in good light, although the colours were sometimes awkward if I didn’t take the effort to frame the shot properly and adjust the brightness metering optimally. It’s not quite as point-as-shoot as you want, but you can get decent images with a bit of effort.

Of course, a big advantage of the rear screen is the ability to capture selfies with the rear camera with ease, and that puts the Lava Agni 3 a few steps ahead of competing devices when it comes to this feature. Having the screen as a viewfinder is helpful when framing selfies, and even lets you use the portrait mode easily. Indeed, it is the best use case of the rear screen, and adds some value to the camera setup.

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Portrait photography was way below par, barely getting depth perception and subject focus right with objects such as flowers and plants. Low-light photography was grainy and often out of focus and hazy in parts of the image. On the whole, this isn’t the best camera phone you can buy for the price (that’s not really the USP of the phone either) but it’ll work for the absolute basics and let you take proper selfies with the more capable rear camera system.

Performance is generally acceptable for a smartphone in this price segment, with the Lava Agni 3 getting a decent amount of power and usability from the MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chipset. The light, near-stock Android UI also helps in this regard, not requiring much to keep going. Don’t expect too much, but in general the phone has enough to keep itself going smoothly for the most part, save for a bit of sluggishness when booting up.

Battery life on the Lava Agni 3 is decent enough, especially when you consider that it has two screens to power. Of course, the smaller rear screen doesn’t need a lot of power and won’t even be put to use for more than a few minutes every day, and the rest of the phone is made to be fairly efficient. I was able to run the phone for a couple of days with moderate use as my second smartphone, and even heavier utilisation won’t cause too much to reduce from that figure.

The Lava Agni 3 is a bit of an oddball in the smartphone market right now, and its big feature may not even seem all that useful when you think about it. With the exception of giving you a proper viewfinder for selfies taken with the rear camera, the back screen feels like a gimmick for the most part.

That said, it’s an interesting touch that makes the Lava Agni 3 unique in comparison to most smartphones priced at under Rs. 25,000. If you like taking selfies or just want something that stands out, the Lava Agni 3 is worth a look.