Oct 24, 2015 11:07 PM
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I buy this phone because it was having the highest specifications at the given price.
After using the phone for a few days what I observed is given below.
Design and build quality:
There's not a lot to talk about the design of the Yureka Plus. It looks identical to the Yureka. It is a carbon copy from the outside except for the fact that now there's a white version, which looks quite nice. We, though, tested the black model, which looks identical to the older phone.
Essentially, I am talking about a polycarbonate body, which has rounded corners and a removable curved back with a rubberised matte finish. It feels nice in the hand and doesn't slip providing a nice grip in the hand.
Obviously, as it has a large 5.5-inch screen, one handed usage is not exactly a feasible option for most. Fortunately, the phone has its volume and power buttons on the right that also provide good travel and tactile feedback. The phone also is rather slim at 8.8mm and 155 grams, which certainly helps alleviate any concerns regarding its weight.
The white version of the phone certainly looks nice, but we can wager that it'll also get dirty quite quickly in a dusty city like Delhi.
Display Quality
The display is the highlight of the YU Yureka Plus. It is the sole reason for the'Plus' nomenclature. The phone gets a massive resolution bump. From the 720p panel of the Yureka, the Yureka Plus has a 5.5-inch full HD 1080p IPS display, which is further protected with a layer of Corning's Gorilla Glass 3.
This is a very nice display, which is able to reproduce true to life colours, sharp contrast and also offers great viewing angles with minimal colour distortion at extreme angles.
The black levels of the screen are also quite good, especially for something that costs less than Rs.10, 000. Lastly, we also found the phone to be quite usable under direct sunlight.
Corning Gorilla Glass also ensures the phone can resist the odd scratch while you use the phone, though it certainly does not make the phone infallible.
The big takeaway out here is that the Yureka Plus now has a screen that can take on some of the best smartphones in the market including the mighty OnePlus One. This also means it is a really good phone for reading, watching videos or playing games and considering the big screen, even making documents on the go.
Camera Performance
The Yureka Plus comes with quite a standard camera setup. The rear sensor is a 13-megapixel unit with a flash, while the one on the front has a 5-megapixel sensor, but there's no flash.
The interesting thing is that while there's no change officially, we believe YU has tuned the software even more and the results of the camera are better than that of the Yureka, which in its own right is a fantastic camera phone for the price.
It takes some superb photos that offer ample details, good levels of contrast and punchy colours. It is a very good camera in either situation - be it daylight or the night. The phone is also able to achieve a very shallow depth of field effect on macro - close up shots.
Importantly, the photos never appear to be soft as the phone nails the levels of sharpness. The camera is also pretty accurate with white balance and metering.
In dim lighting, admittedly noise creeps in and the photos tend to me grainy, however, mostly the results are usable, which is saying a lot for a phone that costs Rs.8, 999.
The front camera is also quite good. It captures a lot of detail and importantly thanks to the wide angle lens manages to capture multiple subjects. The camera also comes in handy for some good quality video calls.
The phone is capable of shooting good quality 1080p video. Largely, it takes stable videos, but the quality of the audio can be problematic in certain situations. This is true mostly of loud environments like nightclubs.
Battery Life
The 2, 500mAh battery largely offers similar performance than that of the older Yureka. This means the phone will in most cases easily last you a full day with medium to heavy usage. On an average, the phone lasted us around 14-16 hours, that too on a 4G network and with a higher resolution screen. This was impressive.
In daily use, we normally make around 2 hours of phone calls, browse the web for around 30-40 minutes and take around 15-20 photographs on a daily basis. We also have two social network and email accounts constantly pings along with WhatsApp. While commuting we also use Google Music for streaming audio and YouTube for videos. We also played games like Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2 for an hour at least on a daily basis while testing the phone.
The battery life should be good for most people, but in the case you are looking at heavier usage Xiaomi's Redmi Note will offer better battery life.
Software and hardware Performance
Back in December, the YU Yureka was the best performing smartphone that money could buy. The Yureka Plus remains a very fast phone for the price, but calling it the fastest smartphone in the price segment would be pushing it.
The phone retains the same processing package - The Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor, 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage. There is about 12.32 GB of user available storage, but if that's an issue, the phone also has a microSD card slot, which can be used to expand the memory further.
You'd believe that the same processing package would offer the same type of performance. However, there's a big change. The same hardware now needs to drive a higher resolution display; hence the GPU is driving more pixels.
This certainly leads to a slightly diminished user experience in terms of pure speed. The animations switch at a slightly slower rate and apps also take slightly longer to switch when compared to the original Yureka. That said, this is not a crippling difference and most people will be unable to make out the difference unless of course both the phones are side by side.
The only major difference was in the lockscreen. Whenever the lockscreen was loaded with a lot of notifications, we found it opened slowly.
Multitasking remains good and we were able to have around 10-15 apps open at the same time without any performance hassles.
Gaming remains good, though now frame rate drops are more evident on games like Dead Trigger 2. Nevertheless, games look nice thanks to the higher resolution display. Importantly, the phone also doesn't get warm especially while playing games like Asphalt 8.
Call quality on the Yureka Plus was rather trouble free. Yes, we did face the odd dropped call, but that's probably more to do with the congested network than anything else. On the Airtel 4G network in Delhi NCR we also managed to enjoy 4G speeds in select areas. Like its predecessor, the Yureka Plus is also a dual-SIM smartphone.
The speaker on the Yureka Plus is not great but still good. We advice avoiding it for conference calls and certainly if you intend to blast heavy metal.
Is it worth buying for 8999 INR
With the Yureka Plus, YU has successfully managed to cover the Yureka's biggest flaw. Its display. However, at the same time, the phone loses a bit of the fluidity of performance the Yureka was known for. Now, with the competition charging in we just can't call it the best phone under Rs.10, 000.
It remains one of the best phones you can buy for less than Rs.10, 000. It will particularly appeal to people who are looking for stock Android like experience and a good camera.
