Micromax Yu Yureka Review : Yu did it !

 Overview

Seldom has a phone arrived in the Indian market with so much controversy. When Micromax announced its exclusive tie-up with Cyanogen (a company known for making a highly customized version of Android) and the launch of a new brand, YU, to represent it, the market had been buzzing in anticipation about what the devices under the new brand would be like. Then towards the end of the year, the Yureka was unveiled, complete with CyanogenMod, decent specs, and a surprisingly low price of Rs 8,999 (about USD 150). It goes on sale, exclusively online on Amazon India, from January 13. The big question of course, is: is it worth investing in?

Look and feel

I had covered the appearance of the Yureka in my first impressions of the device, but to summarise once again, it is a phone that looks smart rather than spectacular. It is definitely not a head turner but is not an eyesore by any means either. I tainly cannot see people turning their noses up at it. It is slim enough at 8.8 mm and at around 150 grammes, relatively lightweight too. The front is jet black barring a small sphere for the home button, which gets flanked by the back and theme setting buttons when you power on the display. Design is largely minimalistic – volume rocker on the left, power/display button on the right, 3.5 mm audio jack on top, and micro USB port on the base. The back has the camera with a flash on the top and a speaker grille on the lower part.

I said it in my first impressions and i repeat the point – we really think Micromax missed out on a chance to cash in on the YU branding on the back of the device. The light blue YU logo on the greyish (moonstone grey is the official name) back does not really grab attention. In sum, the Yureka is not an ambassador of smartphone style by any means, but it is certainly a decent looking device. Yes, I have heard that it is in fact a rebranded version of another Chinese device, but honestly, we do not see how it retracts from its appearence .

Specifications and software

here's a lot to like about the Yu Yureka. For starters, there's the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 615, an octa-core SoC with 64-bit support. Lower cost octa-core processors from MediaTek have been around for quite a while, but this is a first for Qualcomm. Cyanogen 11 just happens to be 64-bit capable, which makes that feature worthwhile too. There's 2GB of RAM, which is good for a phone in this price bracket. There's 16GB of internal storage space and up to 32GB can be added using a microSD card.


I am also happy with the screen's 720x1280-pixel resolution. At 5.5 inches, it's just a little grainy - but again we're reminded that we could be doing a lot worse when it comes to sub-Rs. 10,000 smartphones.

The standard wireless protocols are covered: Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi b/g/n. LTE is supported on the 2300MHz TDD band currently used by Indian service providers as well as the less common 1800MHz FDD band.

The Yureka isn't the first device in India to come running Cyanogen OS - that distinction goes to the OnePlus One (Review | Photos). For now, it looks as though OnePlus won't be able to sell devices running Cyanogen anymore, thanks to a rather contentious  legal dispute between all three companies.

Cyanogen OS looks good, and one of its strengths is that you can customise many aspects of its appearance. We weren't too happy with Yu's rather vanilla lockscreen, but it can be disabled in the settings and the default lockscreen with shortcuts and widgets replaced it. There is a row of settings shortcuts in the notifications shade, but there's also a button that takes you to another panel with more shortcuts (including some duplicates).

There are loads of settings for lots of tiny little things, such as the appearance of the power level indicator in the status bar, how long the capacitive button backlight should stay on, and what each of the device's buttons should do. You can disable the capacitive buttons altogether and display soft buttons on screen, if you would like to for any reason. There are also lots of shortcuts, such as double-tapping the status bar to lock the phone, or sliding a finger along it to adjust brightness. One of our favourite features is sound profiles - just like on old Nokia phones, you can set profiles such as Home, Work, Night and Silent.

The look and feel of the UI is highly customisable. Just like we saw on the OnePlus One, you can mix and match elements from different themes. We eventually settled on a custom mix of elements from the Android Holo theme and Yu's own defaults. Creating a Cyanogen account gives you access to more downloadable themes - we could see only five in the app, but presumably there will be more in due course.

Yu has kept the bloatware to a minimum. In addition to all the common Google apps, there's a browser called Yuniverse (which is nothing more than Opera with a skin and custom icon), an audio equaliser and effects app called AudioFX, a souped-up calculator, and something called Baton that claims to "cloudify" any app of your choosing, which means they'll be able to sync content across devices even if they don't have that capability on their own. The Baton app didn't work at all for me - it forced us to download an update from the Play store, which threw up an error stating no such app exists.

Performance

But all the hardware and software of the world is of little use if the device on which it is plonked does not perform well. And in that department, the Yureka gives an excellent account of itself. For the stat counters, we can mention that it ran up an Antutu Benchmark score of 31,900, which is above that of the HTC One M7, the Redmi Note and the Asus ZenFone 5, and not too far behind that of the LG G3. Speaking from a general consumer’s perspective, the phone ran smoothly without a single crash, the touch experience was smooth, and before anyone asks, no, we did not have any heating problems with the device at all – it did heat up very slightly during extended photography sessions and while playing HD games like the Asphalt and FIFA series, but at no time did we feel uncomfortable holding it or feel tempted to boil eggs on it. Cyanogen ran smoothly on it – in fact, so hitch-free was our experience that we think it actually was the best we have seen in terms of pure smoothness on a sub-Rs 10,000 phone, bettering what we have seen on the Redmi Note 3G and the Asus ZenFone 5. Multiple tasks ran without any problems and the display while not being the brightest or most spectacular that we have seen was good enough for videos and browsing the Web and for extended ebook reading sessions.

Verdict

Micromax appears to have made a smart move. Indian buyers seem to be comfortable enough with online-only sales now, and if this device is available in sufficient quantities without the rigmarole of weekly registrations and flash sales, it will be a very solid alternative to the Xiaomi Redmi Note. The fact that the 4G version of the Redmi Note costs Rs. 1,000 more than the Yureka will also help Micromax win points over its Chinese cousin.

The Yu Yureka has a lot going for it, and even its minor flaws can be overlooked considering the amazingly low price. Yu has identified its target audience well and has delivered a very, very attractive product.

Cyanogen OS is a huge plus - we're just a tiny bit miffed with Micromax for throwing a wrench into the OnePlus One launch, but if the Yureka is anything to go by, we can probably expect a range of Yu devices that live up to the same promise. 

In 2014, we were repeatedly forced to recalibrate our expectations of phones in all price categories thanks to disruptive new launches nearly every month. Buyers will be most happy to know that there seems to be no sign of this trend slowing down - 2015 is off to a cracking start indeed.