Yu Yuphoria review: Everything looks good but not perfect

In December 2014, Yu Televentures (a sub-brand of Micromax) announced its partnership with Cyanogen and also declared that it will be bringing affordable smartphones to the Indian market. Yu Yureka was the first smartphone that the company introduced and it was a runaway success. Then on May 12, it introduced another phone named Yuphoria, a smartphone that derived its name as well as some of its features through the power of crowd sourcing.

In this review we try to find out if the phone managed to offer people all that they were expecting from this smart device.

Design

From the word go, Yu had been stressing on the design and looks of its Yuphoria smartphone. At the launch event too, the company went to great lengths to explain how critical design element was for them, and this sort of reflects in the design.

Yu Yuphoria does come with a metal frame with the rounded corners. The metal look is a welcome change as most other smartphones in this range offer a polycarbonate body. The back of the smartphone sports a matte finish, which provides a good grip.

On the front, we have 5-inch display that is graced with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. On the top middle there is a subtle YU branding, and right next to it is front camera and light sensor. At the bottom of the display are customisation Android buttons much like the other smartphone that run on Cyanogen. The bottom panel houses the USB charging port while the 3.5mm jack is placed on the top panel.

The left panel has been left bare; the volume rocker and the power button take up their position on the right panel. The buttons are classically done and add to the overall design value of the smartphone. However, from the usability point of view, it is a great annoyance to have a power button in the middle of your volume rocker.

Overall, the device looks appealing but we would like to admit that on first glance it did remind us of the Lumia 830. The device is available in champagne gold with white and buffed steel with a tinge of black.

Performance

The Yu Yuphoria comes with a 5-inch HD display, which is graced with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The display was pretty decent for a phone at this price point.

Running the show in the YU Yuphoria is Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset, which has a 64-bit 1.2GHz quad-core processor along with Adreno 306 GPU, along with 2GB of RAM. It is noteworthy that the same processor has been deployed in most other competing devices that are offered at the same price points such as Lenovo A6000, Motorola Moto E 4G, Xiaomi Redmi 2 etc. However, these devices offer only 1GB of RAM while Yuphoria comes with 2 gigs. Proves why the phone offers stutter-free performance. Multi-tasking was smooth and so was the experience of browsing the Internet.

However, the multi-touch on the phone was not as great and we did find that the device miss a few characters while typing fast.

Much like the other budget devices, Yuphoria is a dual-SIM device and both the SIM slots support LTE connectivity. For the purpose of this review, we had both SIMs working but only one of the same had data enabled and was running on 3G network, as in Delhi we still don't have 4G connectivity. With frequent WhatsApp and twitter notifications the 2,230mAh battery in the Yuphoria was only able to last three-fourth of the day.

There have always been tech enthusiasts in India that were fond of Cyanogen as it offers a great deal of customisation. Yu Yuphoria enables people to enjoy the same at a budget and we did not mind that a bit. However, after using Mi devices for a while we did feel that Mi Ui offers greater customisation regarding SIM management than that offered by Cyanogen. For example if you want to decide on the fly which phone would you want to make use for this particular call, you will be able to do that very easily in MiUi, but in case of Cyanogen you will have to get into setting and change the same and then go back in the setting to get to your preferred default mode.

Yu has added a few special apps on the phones for Yuphoria, which includes, AudioFX that lets you customise the audio output. Then there is ScreenCast that enables you record your on screen navigation's. There is also a Themer app which lets you customise various aspects of the theme such as the fonts and wallpapers and if you really want you can even make your own custom theme.

Camera

The Yu Yuphoria comes with an 8MP auto focus camera. The quality of the images clicked through the same turned out to be good when the lighting conditions was congenial but not so much when they weren't. The rear camera is also capable of shooting 1080p video capture. The camera app that we see on the Yuphoria is much like that on Yureka and offers the same bunch of features.

There is 5MP front camera, which comes with 86 degree wide angle lens to capture great camera. The same works great and so does the beauty feature that is added to enhance the picture quality of the selfies.

Like

From the time of the launch, the makers of Yuphoria are trying to draw our attention towards the design of the smartphone and we have to admit that it is indeed a good looking phone. The company would even go on to claim that it is only smartphone at this price point to offer metal. Though we don't think that metal is the best thing to happen to phone designs, but we give it to them to for making such an attempt.

Dislike

 Well, when we have an affordable smartphone in our hands, we want to get  so much of it done from the same. The major barrier that can come  between us and the above-mentioned goal is the battery. This is exactly  what has happened for the Yu Yuphoria. We wish that it could have lasted  us a little more.

The camera of Yuphoria is a mixed bag. The rear camera manages to capture great pictures in good lightening conditions, but sub-par ones when the light conditions were not favourable. The silver lining is the front camera, which does its job exactly as it is supposed to.

Verdict

At Rs 6,999 Yu Yuphoria is a great phone to have. We are not saying that it's a perfect device. It does come with its share of problems; the biggest one being that its battery drains out real fast, but the company claims to rectify the problem through future updates.

On the up side, you get a great software experience and that along with good looks; this why we say it is a good device to have if you really are looking for one.