Yureka – The Zeus of phones
This year saw the beginning of a new era in the realm of smartphones with the introduction of middle-range smartphones. These beasts boast top-notch specs at affordable prices. To name a few hits would be the Moto G (1st gen and 2nd gen), MI Redmi 1s, Huawei Honor 6, Nokia Lumia 730, Lenovo Vibe X2, LG L90, and so on. These phones have not only emerged popular, especially in the Indian market, but have also cemented the fact that one doesn’t need to burn a hole in the pocket to get a decent spec’d smartphone. Many OEMs have played their chances in this bracket. Micromax is one such home-grown OEM who aims to play it big, with it’s new entry, the Yu Yureka (AO5510).
Yu Yureka – Hardware
Yureka is the first entry in the Yu series by Micromax touting our beloved Cyanogenmod 11. The dimensions of the phone are 154.8 x 78 x 8.8 mm. It bears a stunning 5.5 inch 720 x 1280 HD IPS display, with a decent pixel count of 267 ppi. More so, it comes with Gorilla Glass 3 protection too. We can see brand new off-screen navigation touch buttons below the screen. Under the hood we have a 2500 mAh Li-Po battery which is considered quite fine for this price bracket. As claimed, it promises a stand-by time of upto 310 hours, talk time of about 8 hours, 6 hours of HD video playback and 4 hours of continuous moderate gameplay.
Connectivity options include standard Micro-USB, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and a 3.5 mm audio jack for media playback. Surprisingly, Micromax did include all necessary sensors too. We have onboard accelerometer, proximity sensor, gyroscope and an ambient light sensor also. We only have a Dual SIM variant, featuring two micro-SIM cards. The fact that it also supports Cat. 4 4G LTE connectivity might give its rivals a chill. This means we can have download speeds upto 150 Mbps and upload speeds of about 50 Mbps, along with Band 40 and band 3 support.
Storage wise, it comes with 16 GB inbuilt storage, which can be expanded upto 32 gigs via microSD card slot.
Yu Yureka is no slouch when it comes to raw power. It has monster specs, we don’t really get to see at such low price. It sports a 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm snapdragon 615 SoC along with an Adreno 405 GPU, for all our gaming needs. It is coupled with 2 gigs RAM, promising fluid multitasking. If that’s not enough, Yu Yureka has a decent 13 MP auto focus back shooter and a 5 MP front shooter. The back camera is bundled with a Sony Exmor CMOS sensor, with f/2.2 aperture giving above average results under low light conditions.
Yu Yureka – Software
Yu Yureka comes with the great, if not the latest software offerings. We have the Cyanogen OS 11 based on Android 4.4.4 KitKat. However, a Lollipop build is promised in near future. The perks of having Cyanogen OS are visible here. We get near full customization of our phone, ranging from the Lockscreen, to the Statusbar. It comes with Cyanogenmod’s powerful Trebuchet launcher, apart from all necessary applications. We also have a ‘themes’ section to change the look and feel completely of the OS. This involves full control over icons, font, boot screen animation, taps and more. It comes with two custom Yu featured themes alongside the KitKat stock theme, for free. This is what Rahul Sharma, co-founder of Micromax terms, the ‘Temple of Customisation’ and ‘Android on steroids’. Thus we enjoy thousands of features over and above the stock android build.
As far as privacy of the end user is concerned, we have the ability to edit and customize permissions of each app. We also have Features like Device encryption, Pin Scramble, Find and Wipe device, Profiles and protected apps section.
The key features Yureka boasts of, are represented below.
Yu Yureka – The verdict
According to Co-founder of Cyanogen Inc., Kurt McMaster, “There’s a level of stagnation in the smartphone market ever since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, where the predominant mobile paradigm was to swipe, tap, and open an app”. He visualizes Cyanogen defeating the paradigm, with the help of this partnership with Micromax. He promised to bring a number of global and local services to Cyanogen in India, which he describes as the fastest growing Smartphone market in the world. “There’s a battle being fought in India, and with Cyanogen+Yu, we intend to win that battle.”
It is priced at a mere 8,999 INR. Registrations have started already at Amazon (link below) and shipping will be done by second week of January. To top it off, early birds get a leather back cover worth 999 INR free. Micromax is pushing the limits with doorstep free replacement and repair. Power users shall be more than happy to know that their warranty won’t be void on rooting the smartphone as it comes with an unlockable bootloader. I’ll quote Rahul Sharma here saying,
“You are the master, you control your destiny, you create the software, we’ll put it on your devices.”
True to the tagline given, Yureka is definitely ‘The Zeus Of Smartphones’. What do you think of this new entry in the mid-range bracket? Will it fare better against it’s prevailing rivals? Do let us know about your thoughts in the comments section below.
Registration link – Amazon : Yu Yureka