Yu Yuphoria Review

After the success of Yureka, Yu announced their second smartphone, the Yuphoria couple of weeks back. Unlike the Yureka, the Yuphoria competes in a different price segment. Yuphoria comes with 5 inch display which has HD resolution (1280 X 720p) with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and it runs on Snapdragon 410 64 bit Quad core processor. The device also sports a 8MP rear camera and a front 5MP camera for selfies.

There is 2GB DDR3 RAM and the device also comes with 16GB internal storage similar to Yureka. The device is priced Rs 6999. So it is value for money?  Lets check this out in this detailed review.

Related Reading: Yu Yuphoria Unboxing

Design and Build:

Design is one of the key USP of the Yuphoria and this was evident from the presentation at launch where Rahul Sharma gave importance to the design. The device is made of metal and has great finishing. The device is available in black and white variants. It comes in a Anti finger finishing, laser polishing. It has a metallic body and has a symmetric design with 3 key design where the power button is positioned at the center of volume rocker keys. Design wise the buttons look good, but usability wise, the position of the power key is messed up and you often end up pressing the volume keys for power.

The rear panel is made of plastic material and does gives a premium feel. While most of the budget phones do not emphasize on design aspect, Yuphoria has taken this into consideration. The white color has a golden finishing round the sides of the device. The micro USB charging slot is at the bottom and the 3.5mm audio jack is placed on the top. Both these slots have a black plastic finishing. The rear panel has the 8MP camera in a circular ring, with LED flash placed inside it. There is Yu branding the the speakers located at the bottom.

The front panel has the YU logo on the top, 5 inch HD display, 5MP camera and the sensors. The three buttons are onscreen and overall, the phone has good build quality. At 8.24mm and 143gms, it is pretty slim and light weight as well considering it has metallic body. Design wise, the phone has similarities with the Lumia 830 and Lumia 930.

Display:

The display on the Yu Yuphoria is a 5 inch HD display (1280 X 720p) and has a IPS LCD panel. The HD display is more or less a standard in the 7-8k price point now and the display on Yuphoria also comes with Corning Gorilla glass 3 support to prevent scratches. The colors look pretty good on the display and they are vibrant as well. The touch response is also very smooth on the device. The IPS display makes sure the viewing angles are also good.

The sunlight readability was just average and the display is reflective. The display is pretty sharp making it good for media consumption and also for reading. Overall, the 5 inch HD display is pretty impressive for this price point although might not be the best.

Software:

Yu has exclusive right for Cyanogen OS in India and the device runs Android 5.0.1 out of the box with Cyanogen OS version 12 on top of it. There are very few devices with Android Lollipop 5.0 under the 7k price point and the UI is mostly stock with some fine tuning by Cyanogen. The phone also comes with some useful set of apps including Baton, AudioFX, File Manager, FM radio and more.

The notification center is also mostly stock and you can customize the layout and arrangement of icons in the notification center.

YUniverse is the phone’s custom browser which is basically a customised version of the Opera browser. Other options available including double tap to wake and sleep. Cyanogen has also included Truecaller into the software and the integration is deeper than just having the app installed on your phone.

The phone comes with option to customize the device with themes. You have tons of theme packs to choose from. There’s even an app themer option, which changes the look of individual apps in accordance to the theme that you’ve applied.

The amount of customizations is very good, you can change the layout of navigational buttons and also there is support for gestures. Overall, the software is very good and feature rich.

Performance:

Yu Yuphoria is powered by Qualcomm’s 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 410 SoC which is a 64 bit processor and also includes Adreno 306 graphics. The phone also comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of in-built storage which is probably the first time on a budget smartphone. The storage can be expanded by up to 32GB using a microSD card and you can install apps on the SD card. There is close to 12GB in the first boot.

The performance of the device was fairly smooth and we did not encounter any lags in daily use. The multi tasking was also pretty smooth without any issues. The gaming performance of the device is also good with no lags although there was occasional frame drops. The phone also had small hiccups when running multiple games in the background. But the overall performance was pretty good and satisfactory for a budget smartphone.

The call quality on the device was also good and we never experienced any call drops and signal strength was acceptable. The phone supports dual SIM cards with 4G LTE support, but unfortunately we couldn’t test the 4G speeds as it is not available in our area. The speaker performance of the device was also above average and should be good for music lovers.

Camera:

The phone also comes with 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a front facing 5MP camera for selfies and video calls. We have already done the detailed camera review of the device, you can check it out here. Photo samples are also included in our camera review.

Battery Life:

The phone comes with a 2230mAh battery and in our battery tests we were able to pick up a day of usage with the battery. We tested with social apps running in the background on 3G along with emails configured. We also did some casual gaming along with calls and ended up with a day of usage from the phone.

The battery on the device is user replaceable.

Verdict:

So should I buy the Yuphoria at Rs 6999? The Yuphoria is great value for money at Rs 6999 with 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, great design and above average camera with Cyanogen OS. But where the Yuphoria puts a question mark is in the after sales service. We have seen numerous complaints on the service model of Yu. We are hoping Yu has managed to resolve these issues.