Micromax Yu Yureka Black up for sale on Flipkart; a good deal at Rs 8,999

The smartphone competes with Xiaomi Redmi 4, Nubia N1 lite and Xiaomi Redmi Note 4

The Yu Yureka Black, the latest offering from the stable of home-grown smartphone maker Micromax, went on sale at 12 noon on June 19, exclusively on Flipkart. The smartphone was recently launched by the company after a rather quiet gap of four months. This dual-SIM budget phone is available for Rs 8,999.

Micromax, a market leader in India until it lost a chunk of its market share to new Chinese players like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Nubia, Huawei, etc, is pinning its hopes on the Yu Yureka Black smartphone to regain its past glory.

But how far will the new smartphone go in reviving Micromax’s fortune? Business Standard took the new Yureka Yu Black for a spin to see if it has that ‘X’ factor to outshine strong rivals. Here is what we found:
 

Design

The Yu Yureka Black sports an all-black design and will be available in glossy black and matte black variants. The smartphone features a metallic body that does look premium and strong from all sides. On the front, the smartphone sports a 5-inch full-HD screen protected with 2.5D Gorilla Glass 3. While the side bezels are thin, the top and bottom bezels are huge and could have probably been reduced with the use of a large 5.2-inch screen.

The device fits just right in hand, thanks to the curved back and silver accent antenna lines that add charm to the overall design language of the smartphone. The camera bump, with a circular silver frame enclosed in a silver lining device frame, looks a tad odd and is perhaps the only feature that tempers the rear-side experience of the smartphone.

The ejectable hybrid dual-SIM slot is on the left. That Micromax decided to do away with its plastic SIM tray for a metallic one seems a good move. The volume rocker and power button are on the right of the device, and they are hard to press. The fingerprint scanner, mounted under the screen, could have been moved at the back, especially as there are no other capacitive navigation buttons to complement it.

Display

The Yu Yureka Black sports a 5-inch full-HD display covered with Gorilla Glass 3 for protection from scratches and accidental drops. The display works fine and has enough contrast and saturation for vivid looks. The text looks sharp and the videos render warm colours.

There is no way you can customise the screen colours and the default warm tone sticks to it. Also, the blue screen filter that has become common of late is missing from the settings. Another feature that looks odd are the on-screen navigation keys, which shrink the overall screen estate.

Hardware

The Yu Yureka Black is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor, which is an octa-core SoC, coupled with Adreno 505 graphic processing unit (GPU) and X6 LTE modem. The SoC offers enough power to keep basic things running, but the full-HD display puts extra load on the processor and slows things down.

The processor is accompanied by 32 GB of storage, expandable through microSD, and 4 GB of RAM. The innards are well-balanced to offer a glitch-free performance if you are not running heavy applications like, say, Asphalt 8 game.

Software

The Yu Yureka Black runs Android Marshmallow v6.0.1 and the Nougat update is promised to come soon. The software feels optimised and there is no glitch or lag. The device feels slow after extended usage with a lot of apps running in the background, so occasional device restarts are advised to free up cache memory.

The device has no bloatware eating into internal storage and the crucial apps and features like FM radio, file explorer, etc, are added to improve the overall utility of the device. 

Camera

The smartphone features a 13-megapixel (MP) 5-lens rear camera and an 8 MP front-facing camera. There is LED flash with both rear and front cameras for low-light conditions. The camera on the rear uses Sony’s IMX 258 sensor with F/2.0 aperture. 

The rear camera is an improvement over its predecessors, and the image quality is acceptable. The camera performs satisfactorily for a budget smartphone, both in daylight as well as low-light conditions. The front camera is accompanied by additional features like front flash and beauty mode for on-par results.

Battery

The Yu Yureka Black is fitted with a 3,000 mAh lithium polymer battery that keeps the show running for one full day. The battery life is a promising aspect of the device, which easily runs through a day, and a little more on normal usage.

Verdict

At a price point of Rs 8,999, Micromax has hit the sweet spot with a smartphone that ticks almost all the right boxes. The budget-level Yu Yureka Black smartphone will compete with the Xiaomi Redmi 4, Nubia N1 lite and Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 in its price segment. There are few downsides to the Micromax device, but some value-added features that rivals are offering could have made the Micromax Yu Yureka Black even better.