I love my yureka very much for its features like it has mid range processor sd 615( though I have seen it on galaxy a7 a8, sony aqua, mi4i, asus zenfone selfie, moto g etc. all are having prices double or triple than this so definitely a value for money), 2Gb RAM, internal 16Gb out of which around 12.80gb free, 13mp camera back with flash, 5mp front camera, 5.5 inch large HD screen( 267ppi), options for switching navigation key in hardware as backlit keys or soft key, cyanogen os 12.1 and upgradeable to cyanogen 13, 2500 mah battery and a good overall development support and price is around?8999/-.So above are some salient features of the yureka. Now time for pros and cons: -
>pros in my point of view:
- it will not have its warranty void if we have rooted it. That’s why I have choosen it. Since I love rooting and flashing custom roms, mods( viper4android is one of them), kernels etc.and I have already knew basics about rooting and all those techy stuffs that I have tried previously in moto g( 1st gen) my first Android phone and galaxy tab 2 gt5113 my first tablet yet. So it’s easy for me to handle this phone. As I have seen in lots of reviews that sd 615 and hence yureka is prone to heating and not a normal one upto 40 - 50 °C but more than that around 70-90°C which was hottest of all the phones I have ever seen.
My friends and relatives told me that its not good phone go for mi4i or zenfone with intel processor and even I ordered firstly mi4i cancelled the same then asus zenfone 2 ordered and cancelled as it was too costly the full hd one for my parents to buy one and also the main reason behind it was at that time when yureka had kitkat out of the box there is no support for intel processor phones to have root and hence no custom roms so same zen ui forever. That’s why I have decided to go for yureka as its having powerful processor and other great features in just 9k and great dev support.
The above mentioned high temps got solved with tweaking the custom kernels and through yu thermal app so nowadays its temperature is around 35 to max 50°C at the times of gaming and other stuffs.
all problems like proximity sensor calibration issues on kitkat( that’s why I have switched to lollipop rom otherwise I won’t) while on phone call we couldn’t disconnect the call or if somebody call us can’t answer the phone as screen used to get dark and no butrons work at that time which was quite annoying . well that also got solved by updating to lollipop and then calibrate the proximity sensor and tithten the screws behind.
In lollipop also many problems were there but got solved with fixes, roms, kernels etc given by people( developers, geeks etc) at yu forum which indeed helped a lot. Even I and my parents also thought to sell this phone but with time and a lot of patience the phone get smooth and stable experience, battery life though it is only 2500 mah( removable forgot to mention that) can easily be able to last a day and a half for a casual user like me. On heavy use it lasts for 8 hours though it depends on rom or kernel and its settings.Well the rom infinitive os made by codezero have 41k antutu score and most stable rom after mokee and many other roms are there having better battery backups and lag free experience. Basically you should play with the settings of kernel and tweaks in forum given by experienced users and choose the one which suits your needs.
You can’t expect to be spoon feeded and to get things ready-made that’s why many people in yu forum have problems or they hard bricked their devices and blaming yu for those things
So if you want to have this phone you should have lots of patience and I mean it, you should not have any fear of losing data and other sorts of fear regarding that.You should have lots of time free to play around with this device which not all can have.There must be passion for not giving up and try continuously for solving upcoming and existing problems. So not all can do these. I think its a developer friendly device and for those having knowledge of android and how to work with them.And above all u must have willingness to learn new things.
- Well enough of the lecture let’s talk about yureka’s pros
I like its display color quality after the cos12.1 update it looks very beautiful than previous update.
about 0.9gb is always free in ram
getting easily around 7-8 hours of SOT.
front camera is good while taking pictures.
audio especially with viper4android both in speaker or earphones sounds awesome and also while using miui rom it sounds loud and clear IMO.
earphones came with it is pretty good, it also came with screen guard in the box
charging is quite faster with custom kernel ie. around 2 hours it takes to get fully charged from 0 to 100 using it with du battery saver that increases speed of charging.
dual sim 4g, Bluetooth 4, WiFi b/g/n etc.
its an Indian brand.
cyanogen os having lots of customizations like theme engine you should have enabled advance options in developer mode.
support for multirom or multiboot different roms without losing any data for flash-o-holics.
support for marshmallow rom and have antutu score of amazingly around 54 to 60k which is awesome.
its very thin about 6-8mm.
>Cons:
very less branded accessories for it
lack of compass, hall sensor.
screen is fingerprint magnet( it surely came with screen guard but I couldn’t able to apply properly and it also have branded yu tempered glass for around 200 rs or so but couldn’t apply it either as it couldn’t get fit with my wallet cover)
back camera is having lots of noise but there are some roms or mods having great cams like color os cam, miui cam etc.
As yu televentures is branch of micromax and yureka is its first product so they have lot to learn and slowly they’ll optimize their hw and sw( hope so) so it is novice among the top global players like Samsung, Sony, HTC etc.
cyanogen os is buggy and unstable in cos 12.1 also some users facing problems of lockscreen bug, battery drainage at faster rate etc. though lockscreen bug can be solved by trying fastboot method.
not suitable for laymen those who aren’t power users or who don’t know much about tech stuffs and use their phone for surfing, fb, whatsapp and other casual stuffs.
have to flash, give a lot of time and try on own various types of custom roms and kernels by flashing it deleting previous roms, precious data etc. and not all of roms and kernels are stable this is kinda annoying for laymen or those who have limited data plans and there is a policy of developers that no one should tell which roms or kernels are stable and bug free.
Though now it does have support for multirom which is thankfully good way to try roms without losing data.
lollipop is having problems of not connecting to wifi but got solved by changing wifi b mode only in router’s page.
267ppi I think is less.
though I didn’t face any problems with yureka so that I have to call yu support but many users in forum said that support is pathetic and if your phone gets hardbrick then it took yu support one month or more to solve this issue.
battery is kind of low it must be 3000 mah or more.
screen is reflective, and its hard to see screen in sunlight.
yu should focus on R & D and should increase their quality of product and should have highly qualified devs rather than passionate devs.
its a coolpad f2 copy from china they can’t even make rheir own design.
Their hardware like battery is not optimized like samsung or Motorola, os is not bugfree and many other things which prevent existing customers and new ones to not to buy such a device in future.Many of rhem are regretting for choice they
have made, same wirh processor and camera.
- standby 200hrs and talktime 8 hours which is very low in stock rom and kernel it takes a lot of time to get it charged.
for more cons u may head to yu forums yureka’s section.
Conclusion is if you can have lots of time and patience and u want to learn new things u should go for this device or u can play around with settings of camera roms etc and there are tutorials also to make roms and kernel for yureka
and if you are not of above type kindly stay away from this.
and go for moto g, mi or any other phones.
Hope this clears up all of the doubts. Some things might be missing out in this review for more information go to yu forums. basically its the best phone in 9k better than at least k3 note or others for my type of people. I know its kind of hard to learn those things and not many of people tinker around or play around the phone so for layman its not the phone for you guys. Thanks for reading this long review.