Yu Televentures, a sub-brand of Micromax, has recently launched a reincarnated version of Yurekasmartphone. Dubbed as Yureka Black, the phone comes with a price tag of Rs 8,999 and is available from Flipkart.
The brand has upgraded its armour and has added some new hardware, which gives it a much-needed arsenal to fight against the competition, especially the Red Dragons. But will it be able to defeat the mighty Dragons and proclaim its dominance in budget segment? Let’s find out.
Say hello to new Black!
When it comes to the design of the smartphones, especially at this price point, most of them has a strong resemblance to each other in one way or the other. But Yureka Black manages to distinguish itself from the familiar looking crowd with the all-black look and metal unibody design. The smartphone has a glossy finish at the back with a gentle curve around the edges that makes it comfortable to hold. The camera hump at the rear panel and the Antenna bands are highlighted with a silver lining (pun intended).
At the front, you will find a 5-inch display with minimal side bezels, a fingerprint sensor at the base and a front flash accompanied by an earpiece and a front camera at the top.
The navigation controls are on-screen. The right houses volume controls and power on/off button, while on the left, there is hybrid SIM slot, which means one can use either two SIMs or one SIM and micro SD card. At the top, you will find the Headphone jack, while at the base there is microUSB port flanked between two speaker grilles.
At the back, you will find a slight curved around the edges, which makes it comfortable to hold and a glossy finish, which gives a premium look. There is a primary camera situated at the top centre position, and just beneath it, one will find a dual LED flash. At the base of the back panel, one will find Yu’s logo, which is a bit hard to find (the glossy back is to be blamed) and silver-colour antenna lines run across the top and bottom of the phone. Overall, the Yureka Black is certainly a good-looking smartphone, which is compact enough to fit in your hands.
Android Nougat update looks promising
Though the smartphone ships with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, but soon it will be updated to the latest Android 7.1.2 Nougat. We were the first to report that the company will come up with the latest Android version as it has recently released the Android Nougat Beta Build for Yureka Black. We downloaded and installed the latest update on our review unit to give you in-depth analysis of the latest UI from Yu.
So to start with, the brand has kept the user interface close to stock with the upcoming Nougat update. One can swipe up from the bottom to access the App drawer, while a scroll down will open up the notification tray.
The new UI is simple to use and is smooth to navigate, which is a welcome move. For security, the company has added an app, which has features like antitheft, file protection and logging. In Antitheft feature, one can remotely lock and wipe phone data in case of phone loss or stolen. All you need to do is type #Lock to lock and #Wipe to wipe your phone. Then there is file protection, which allows you to encrypt the sensitive data present on your smartphone. In Logging, you get to see the notification requests from different apps at one place. The features are pretty useful, but we would have liked if the company has added some additional functionality with the fingerprint sensor, like what we have seen in Micromax Dual 5 or Evok Note for that matter.
Coming to other features, there is a Night Light mode, which eliminates the blue light, making it comfortable for reading in dim light. One can also schedule the Night Light mode by doing to Settings> Display> Night Light. There are some gesture features as well including double press the power button to jump straight to the camera app and lift to quickly check notifications. However, it would be interesting to see whether the company will add other gestures features, which currently ships with the phone.
Overall, expect from few minor app crashed and bugs, which is part and parcel of any developer preview, the overall look and feel of the user interface is quite nice and it would be interesting to see how soon the company will roll out the latest update.
Performance is at par with the competition
Starting with the display department, the phone has a 5.0-inch full HD display with a screen resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. The screen is protected by a 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection, which the company boast is scratchless, though we found some minor scratches on the display, so it advisable to use a screen guard.
The display has some good viewing angles, but the colours are on the warmer side. Also, we found out the display is a bit oversaturated in nature. This is noticeable when you are watching some animated movie on the phone. Further, the screen is reflective in nature, which sometimes makes it difficult to read in outdoor conditions. Overall, the display is not the brightest display we have seen in this price segment but gives a decent output.
Coming to the camera performance, in our separate camera review, we said that the performance of the camera is a mixed bad. Though it is able to capture some good photos in the broad daylight, it shimmers during low light condition. You can check the camera samples of the device here.
The phone is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 Processor clocked at 1.4GHz. It is backed by a 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage out of which 9.31GB is reserved for the system. The storage can be further expanded up to 64GB via micro SD card slot. The smartphone handles most of the daily tasks like surfing, streaming and so on, all thanks to the 4 gigs of RAM.
But it is not meant to handle high-end games like Asphalt 8: Airborne, as one will experience some shutter and lags. Also, during our gaming session, we found out that the device is a bit overheating. However, we faced no problem while playing light games, but if you love to play high graphics games, then this phone is not meant for you.
Coming to the battery performance, the smartphone is juiced up by a 3000mAh battery. The smartphone gives close to 10 hours of battery backup under heavy usage, while if you are a normal user then it can easily last a day or two. On the downside, there is no Fast charging and it takes close to 3 to 5 hours to get fully charged, which can be really frustrating at times.
Other than this, call connectivity is good and earpiece is quite loud as well. However, same cannot be said for the speaker. The speaker is not the loudest and it shimmers when you crank up the volume.