Lava M30 dual-SIM phone

The LAVA M30 is yet another entrant in mobile handset arena, but it has the caliber to make a niche of its own in the Indian market.

It's a Dual-SIM Dual-Standby (GSM+GSM) phone, and targeted at the youth of India who love music.

Build quality wise, the LAVA M30 is top notch. It's got a plastic body feels thick and rugged, just when you thought they had used all the plastic in the world, they decided to use aluminium sheet (that's what it feels like) for a hood to cover it up at the back.

All in all, a phone so sturdily built that you can crack open a coconut with it. So durability is not an issue at all with the LAVA M30.

Upfront it has a 2.2-inch QVGA IPS screen, 260K colours, quite impressive on paper and I have to admit it looks good in real life too. The phone has a very good battery life as it features a 1200 mAh (Li -Ion) Battery.

The M30 also has Bluetooth and USB support, so media sharing and transfer is simplified. The 2 megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom sounds pretty dull, but when I put it to test, the pictures came out quite crisp and bright, despite the low megapixel count.

The fun part about this phone's camera is that you can even use it as a web cam along with your PC. Quite impressive for a phone like this.

Now the main USP of this phone is music, it supports audio formats like MP3, MIDI, AMR, WAV & AAC. The audio quality is great, thanks to the onboard Yamaha audio system with SRS Surround Sound.

The M30 has a 3.5mm universal audio jack and the earphones that comes along with the phone has an adapter that can split the output to two headphones.

So if you're stuck with a mate for a long period of time on a commute, you won't have to share your earphones, but you can have them partake in the music listening experience with a headset of their own.

As for expandability options, the M30 supports a maximum of 8 GB MicroSD cards. A 2GB memory card is bundled in the box with the phone, so all you need to do is download your favorite songs and you are good to go.

One more feature that caught our eye was that you can use your phone like a modem with your PC. That's a lot of features for a phone which is priced below Rs 5,000.

The only sore point for this phone is that it does not support 3G connectivity, but then the target audience for this phone is unlikely to be spending money on the same. Just for the sound output that it gives, I would say it's a good buy.