A phone with a working second screen on its back just went on sale in India, and it is not from Samsung or Xiaomi. It is from Lava. The Lava Virat Curve 5G went live on Flipkart on September 28 at an effective Rs 19,999, and it is the rare budget phone with an actual personality.
I have read every major Lava Virat Curve 5G review published so far, including Beebom’s week-long test, which scored it 9 out of 10 and called it an easy recommendation. The Mobile Indian called Rs 23,999 a great deal. Gadget Bridge said it is an easy phone to like at Rs 19,999. That is an unusually warm consensus for an Indian brand in this segment. So is the hype real? Mostly. With one honest caveat, and it is about the cameras.
That little screen on the back is the whole story
Forget the spec table for a minute. The rear mini display is the reason this phone exists. It sits inside the camera module and shows the time, the charge level, a custom message you set yourself, and notification icons so you can see which app pinged without flipping the phone over. Beebom’s reviewer found it more useful than expected, and more customisable than the notification tricks Google puts on Pixels.
Is it a gimmick? Partly. It shows the app icon, not the message itself, so you still end up picking up the phone. But in a segment where every handset looks like it rolled off the same assembly line, Lava built a phone with a personality. The mini screen is the wink. The curved glass and vegan leather back are the smile. This is a phone that wants to be noticed, and at Rs 19,999, that is a legitimate strategy.
Small aside: Nothing built an entire brand around lights on the back of a phone, and Infinix is now putting notification panels on rear covers too. Lava looked at that trend and asked, why not an actual screen. Whatever you think of the idea, the Virat Curve is the most fun implementation of it under Rs 25,000.
The display is lovely. The sunlight is not
Here is the best part of the phone. A 6.67-inch curved AMOLED at 120Hz, with HDR and 10-bit colour. For movie watching it genuinely outclasses its price. Beebom’s reviewer binged films on it and rated it sharper and more vivid than the OnePlus CE 6 Lite and Poco X8 in the same segment, neither of which supports HDR.
Two catches, and they are real. First, peak brightness is rated at 1,100 nits, which is simply not enough for harsh Indian sunlight. Beebom kept sliding a brightness control that was already maxed out. If you use your phone outdoors a lot, this will annoy you every single day.
Second, the curve itself. Accidental palm touches on the edges, the phone registering contact you never meant. The bundled case fixes it, and Lava deserves credit for including a textured colour-matched case in the box. But the prettiest part of this phone is also its most annoying, and you should know that going in.
Audio gets a passing grade. Dual stereo speakers can fill a small room, though one reviewer noted the bottom speaker does about 90 percent of the work. Fine for reels and calls.
Cameras: the one real caveat
A single 50MP Sony IMX752 main camera with EIS, and a 13MP selfie shooter. No ultrawide, no OIS. Daylight shots come out with natural tones and controlled highlights, which is more than some rivals manage. But the processing oversharpens. Beebom caught it across multiple shots, in landscapes, in a dog portrait, and especially in 2x crops, where the software seems to be inventing detail that is not there.
Night shots are a mixed bag. One cafe scene surprised the reviewer. Another overblew a street lamp so badly it looked like a small sun while the leaves next to it stayed perfectly exposed. The front camera is decent, with natural skin tones and a weak portrait effect. Video tops out at 2K at 30fps on the rear and 1080p on the front, and without OIS the footage gets shaky.
The honest summary: the camera is good enough for social media and family photos. It is not the reason to buy this phone. If photography is your top priority at this budget, look elsewhere. Every reviewer landed in the same place on this, and so do I.
A 6,000mAh battery and a charger from 2019
The battery is quietly excellent. A 6,000mAh cell that delivered around eight hours of screen-on time in Beebom’s mixed-use testing. Movies, YouTube, calls, work chat, an hour or two of gaming. Days ended with 10 to 15 percent left in the tank. On light days, this is a two-day phone.
Now the complaint. The phone supports 45W charging. The box contains a 33W adapter. A full charge takes one hour and forty minutes. In 2026, when Oppo’s K14 Plus ships an 8,000mAh cell at under Rs 45,000 with faster charging in the box, Lava handing you a slower brick than the phone supports feels like finding one shoe. Buy a 45W charger separately, or accept the slow top-ups as the price of the discount. That Rs 19,999 effective price is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this review.
Clean software, and a virtual puppy
Software is where Lava quietly embarrasses the big brands. Android 16 out of the box, nearly stock, zero bloatware, with two OS upgrades and three years of security patches promised. In a segment where you usually spend the first hour deleting apps you never asked for, this is genuinely refreshing.
Then there is Vayu AI, Lava’s AI suite, which is mostly a chatbot for translations and questions. And a virtual puppy you can pet, feed, and make dance. It is Lava’s version of Talking Tom, and you can put the doggo on your home screen as a widget. I have no strong opinion about AI puppies on phones. I just respect a brand that ships one with a straight face.
Performance is fine and unremarkable. The Dimensity 7100 handles Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, and BGMI at 60fps on low settings without drama. Memory management is a bit aggressive, background apps restart, and 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage is the tightest configuration you will find at this price in 2026. Serious gamers should know the ceiling. Everyone else will never notice.
The verdict: buy it for character, skip it for cameras
No hedging. Here is the Lava Virat Curve 5G review verdict.
Buy this phone if you want the most distinctive-looking device under Rs 20,000, with a gorgeous curved AMOLED for movies, a genuinely useful battery, and software that does not insult you. Students, young professionals, anyone tired of the same Xiaomi-Realme-Samsung rotation. At an effective Rs 19,999 with bank offers, it is the most interesting phone in its class, and Beebom’s 9 out of 10 was earned.
Do not buy it if the camera is your priority, if you need an ultrawide lens, or if you spend your days in bright sunlight. The low peak brightness and the oversharpened processing are real, daily frustrations. And at the full Rs 23,999 list price, the fight gets tougher, with better cameras and faster charging appearing nearby.
One more thing worth saying plainly. This is an Indian brand designing for Indian buyers, with home service and clean software, going toe to toe with Chinese giants and winning on personality. That used to be a novelty. The Virat Curve makes it look like a strategy. At Rs 19,999, it deserves your attention. Just buy it for what it is, not for the camera it is not.