Yu Yureka Plus

The YU Yureka might not have won any accolades for its looks, but it did have a utilitarian design with some interesting elements. The Yureka Plus carries the same design language, but with a slightly robust mould. In fact, the brand is so confident of its build quality that to tease the device, it made a video where the phone was thrown from table, down a flight of stairs and more. While we can’t vouch for that build quality, the smartphone does seem to have more solid feel attached to it as compared to its predecessor. However, it isn’t noticeable because the outer body is exactly the same, which suggests that YU has reinforced the internal frame holding all the components together for adding sturdiness.

One of the biggest differences between the YU Yureka Plus and its previous model is the display resolution. Instead of a 720p resolution, the Yureka Plus offers a 5.5-inch full HD IPS display. With a pixel density of 401 ppi, the device reproduces crisp text and there are no sign of pixelation. The viewing angles and brightness levels are also quite impressive. However, colours seem to be slightly dull and not as vibrant as we’d have liked.

While the YU Yureka brought a superb mix of hardware, another high point of the phone was its software. To differentiate its offerings from rivals, the brand had partnered with one of the biggest Android ROM makers, Cyanogen. While the Yureka ran Cyanogen OS 11 based on Android 4.4 KitKat, its successor runs the latest iteration of Android as well as Cyanogen OS, i.e. 5.0 Lollipop and Cyanogen OS 12.

At the outset, both the YU Yureka and Yureka Plus seems to share camera specs. Both of them sport 13-megapixel snappers at the back and 5MP fixed focus selfie cameras. An LED flash assists the primary shooting for capturing images in low-light environments. However, as observed in our camera review of the YU Yureka Plus, the image quality offered by the phablet is actually better. The difference arises because of the different imaging sensors used. While the YU Yureka comes equipped with Sony’s IMX135 sensor, the Yureka Plus sports its higher-end variant, the IMX214. The same sensor can also be found in many flagship devices.

Powering the show on the YU Yureka Plus is the same combination as its predecessor – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor and 2GB of DDR3 RAM. The processor offers two quad-core clusters running at 1.5GHz and 1.0GHz respectively, which run depending upon the intensity of the task. The SoC also offers Adreno 405 GPU clocked at 550MHz. Just liked the Yureka, the Yureka Plus offers near-flawless performance. Be it basic apps or heavy games or running multiple apps together, the handset never breaks a sweat. We played Modern Combat 5: Blackout and Riptide GP2 for long periods of time without noticing any lag or frame drops.