Yu Televentures recently announce a new ‘flagship’ phone for the company, the YU Yunicorn. After launching the most powerful phone, Yutopia last year, the company is now launching a mid-range phone. When we reviewed the Yutopia, we found the software was not the best and had a lot of bugs.
Yu is now releasing Yunicorn with a new UI called Android on Steroids. The Yunicorn comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD display and is powered by MediaTek Helio P10 chipset with 4GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. So how does Yunicorn stand up to the competition offered by Redmi Note 3, ZUK Z1 and Moto G4 Plus? Let’s find out in this detailed review.
Design and Build:
Without a doubt, the Yunicorn is the best-designed smartphone from Yu so far. The phone comes with a metallic unibody design with a brushed finishing on the rear panel similar to Honor 5X. But at the same time, it is not the slimmest or lightest phone in the segment and feels quite heavy at 172gms. The rear panel has 13MP camera, dual LED flash, and the YU branding.
The front panel has the capacitive home button which also acts as the fingerprint scanner, 5.5-inch display, front 5MP camera and the usual set of sensors. The micro USB charging slot and speaker unit are located at the bottom while the 3.5mm audio jack is placed on the top. The power and volume keys are on the right side while SIM tray is located on the left side.
Yunicorn definitely feels good in the hand with a good design and build quality.
Display:
Yunicorn comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD (1080p) panel which offers good colors and sharp pictures. The screen gets a protective glass from NEG (Nippon Electric Glass) which means you don’t have to worry about scratches happening.
The touch response on the display looks good and also offers decent viewing angles. The sunlight legality looks quite decent. Overall, the display performs quite well on the Yunicorn.
Software:
While Yu has experimented with Cyanogen on their previous device, they have been buggy. This time, Yu has gone in with their own software called Android on Steroids which is basically a stock version of Android 5.1 Lollipop with some minor tweaks. The notification center and settings panel look mostly stock while the app drawer and icons have been given a custom look.
The phone comes with Around Yu, a feature introduced with Yutopia, which allows users to get access to hotels, food, shopping, cabs, trains and more just from a swipe. The phone does not come with any additional customization tools but offers standard options.
There are few apps included like File Manager, Sound Recorder, Health, Gaana and more. Overall, the UI feels decent and you will not have many issues if you love stock like experience.
Performance:
Yunicorn is powered by the MediaTek Helio P10 Octa Core processor coupled with 4GB of RAM and it supports 4G LTE along with dual SIM cards. There is 32GB onboard storage out of which around 24GB is available to the user.
Talking about the performance of the device, the phone performed quite well in day to day tasks like browsing, calls, social networking, camera usage etc., as it has plenty of RAM. But even with 4GB of RAM, the gaming performance was quite average. We tested high graphic rich games like Asphalt 8 Airborne and we could clearly see the device lagging and this could be attributed to the Helio P10 which isn’t a great mid range performance when compared to Snapdragon’s 650 or 617.
But at the same time, heating on the device was well under control and no major issues. The call quality on the phone was quite good and so were the speaker unit located at the bottom. The phone packs Wi-Fi, Bluetooth while NFC is missing on this device. The fingerprint sensor is located on the physical home button and it works very well. You can add multiple fingerprints to unlock the device.
Camera:
Yu Yunicorn packs a 13MP rear camera with a five-element lens with EIS (electronic image stabilization). The front facing camera is at 5MP for selfies. The camera interface is quite disappointing for a phone released in 2016. The interface looks dated and we have seen phones with the similar interface in 2013. It takes a lot of time to focus and this is one of the biggest issues with the phone. Moreover, the phone takes videos in 3GP format which is quite strange for a flagship phone.
Now talking about the camera samples, the daylight shots have good colors and decent overall clarity. The sharpness levels could have been a tad better, but overall quite decent. The low light photos were also quite decent for a phone in the price segment. Overall, the camera takes decent shots, but then it is definitely not the best in class. The front facing camera is also good for selfies and does a good job.
Battery Life:
Yunicorn packs a massive 4000mAh battery and the battery performance is very good on the device. With regular usage or moderate usage, the phone lasted for almost 1.5 days or even more which is very good. If you aren’t a person who loves to play games, you might be able to get even close to 2 days with the battery. But unlike many phones in this segment, fast charging is not available on Yunicorn.
Verdict:
Yunicorn is probably the best package offered by Yu so far considering the issues the company had with previous devices. Yunicorn is a good offering with good design, display, software and battery life. But the performance was not very great even with 4GB RAM and this is due to the Helio P10 chipset.
Yunicorn is available exclusively on Flipkart for a price of Rs 12,999 and competes with Redmi Note 3, Lenovo ZUK Z1 and also Moto G4 Plus in the same price segment.
