Yu Yureka

While the OnePlus One users get a sandstone finish (on the 64GB model anyway), the Yureka offers what the vendor calls a ‘moonstone’ finish. Obviously a moniker meant to go head-on against OnePlus’ offering, it refers to the matte grey rear that’s shod from plastic and looks decent. By that, we mean it’s better than most other options in this price range, even though you probably won’t turn any heads with it. It’s also fairly good in terms of keeping fingerprints and smudges at bay, and the overall build quality seems solid, without the plasticky feel.

The 5.5-inch display bears a resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels, and the pixel density works out to be 267 ppi. It’s layered with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection and an oleophobic coating to keep fingerprints at bay. In terms of capabilities, we didn’t really have any complaints with it – the colours look vibrant, while the viewing angles and sunlight legibility are good. It may not be the sharpest we’ve seen, and screens of this size obviously look better with higher resolutions but one look at the sticker price is enough to know that it hardly gets any better at this range.

Pretty much all Chinese smartphone brands selling their devices in India offer custom skins or ROMs – just take a look at phones from Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei, OPPO, or ZTE. HTC’s Sense UI, Samsung’s TouchWiz and ASUS’ ZenUI are also big points of differentiation, but so far, Indian brands haven’t paid much attention to the software side of things. With the exception of XOLO which, with its HIVE UI, is offering a theme-able community-driven platform to its users, most other Indian brands selling Android devices offer near-stock interfaces. By tying up with Cyanogen to power its devices, YU has made a brilliant move. Just in case you haven’t heard of Cyanogen OS, it’s a very well-known custom firmware among geeks and power users in the Android community, and offers ROMs that can be flashed on a variety of different smartphone models. This isn’t something that regular users tend to do though, so we’ll forgive you if you don’t know all about it. On a side note, the OnePlus One also runs Cyanogen OS, and that was the bone of contention that led to the court case, since YU’s partnership with Cyanogen gives it exclusive rights to the platform in the country. On the Yureka, you get Cyanogen OS v11 with Android Kitkat 4.4.4 as the base, and an update to a build that uses 5.0 Lollipop should be coming sometime in the near future.

The primary snapper on the Yureka boasts impressive credentials like a Sony IMX135 CMOS sensor, f/2.1 aperture, and 5P Largan Blue Lens architecture, while the front shooter offers a selfie-friendly resolution of 5-megapixels. The Cyanogen camera app provides the UI, and going by the overall simplistic theme, hides a fair share of features under a minimalistic interface.

Inside the Yureka sits a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 615 chip clocked at 1.5GHz, working in tandem with 2 gigs of RAM. The 64-bit capabilities of the hardware don’t really mean much as this point though, since the Android KitKat base doesn’t support it. Google added support for 64-bit architecture in Android 5.0 Lollipop, and once the Yureka gets the Cyanogen update for the latest Android version and the app ecosystem also embraces 64-bit, the device should be ready to offer all the advantages boasted by the new technology.