Yu Yunique Review :The Most Popular Low Cost 4G Phone

Micromax Yu or just Yu Yunique, is currently one of the best affordable 4G enabled smartphones in India. Along with the low price tag, the Yu Yunique packs decent specs and features. Available exclusively on Snapdeal, the Yu Yunique comes with the price tag of just Rs. 4,999 and unlike any other Chinese smartphones, the Yu Yunique is assembled in India.

What makes Yunique an amazing smartphone is not only its low price tag but also its amazing design and build quality. The phone features a premium design with near stock version of Android 5.1 Lollipop. We spent a couple of days testing this smartphone and this is what we think.

Overview

Before we start analyzing the phone, let’s quickly recap what we know according to the papers. The Yu Yunique comes with a 4.7-inch of 720p HD display screen, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and powered by Snapdragon 410 processor. The phone packs 1GB of RAM and 8GB of Internal Storage. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system with stock UI.

Build and Design

The Yu Yunique is beautifully crafted smartphone with a 4.7-inch display screen and premium build quality. The back panel is soft to touch and has some kind of rubber like coating. Which not only makes it fit comfortably in one hand but also a fingerprint magnet.

One of the first thing which you will notice on the back panel is the big camera ring, which also houses LED flash. Thanks to that ring, most of your friends will think that you have a high-end camera phone. But in reality it is just 8-megapixel and of bad quality. Along with that, there is a Yu branding just below to that, followed by a normal speaker.

Coming to the front, there is a 2-megapixel camera on the top, with YU logo at the center and other sensors. As Yu Yunique uses on-screen navigation buttons, so there isn’t any capacitive button on the body.

Other than that, the micro-USB port is on the bottom and a 3.5mm audio jack on top. Turning it right, you will find three buttons, which are namely for the volume UP, Power and Volume down. Ya! the Power button is at the center, so your finger might take some time to learn the location.

All these three buttons are easy to press and are located at the correct place. I mean for a phone with a 4.7-inch display screen, that is where you should embed the buttons. It makes the one hand operator a lot easier and better.

Opening the back (which is totally hard), you will find the non-removable 2000 mAH battery, a micro-SD card slot, and two Micro-SIM slots. Although Yu Yunique comes with earphone, charger, and a USB cable (Check the Full Unboxing Video Here), the Charger is what you will find annoying. It has weird blue color LED light, which feels very bad during the night time. So, you can’t keep your phone plugged into the charger in the sleeping room or else you will definitely find that Blue light irritating.

Camera

The Yu Yunique packs an 8-megapixel camera on the back with LED flash and a 2-megapixel on the front. Although the camera app is decent and looks a lot like a stock camera app, but the picture quality is not that good. We tested the camera in different lighting condition. While it captured good images in daylight, but it failed to impress in the low light condition. The details are very week and the overall picture quality is also not that impressive.

The Camera app does include some features like auto-focus, image beautify and more. The shutter and focus speed is also good. But sometimes, the auto-focus feature fails to focus on the object. But the picture quality is still better than the Xiaomi Redmi 2 Prime (Full Review).

Talking about the front facing camera which is just 2-megapixel, you can’t use it to capture beautiful selfies. Not only selfies, the video calling is also not that clear. But don’t forget, it is an affordable and low-end smartphone, so you shouldn’t complain much. At this price, the picture quality is acceptable.

Software

The Yu Yunique runs near stock version of Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system. Ya! there is no CyanogenOS this time. While we don’t know the reason why YU decided to pre-install Android Lollipop, instead of CyanogenOS, but it still includes some taste of CyanogenOS. It is not completely stock, there are some customizations too.

As Yu Yunique runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, without any third-party skin, so the overall performance is smooth. Everything works on a single tap. I mean just tap and you are good to go. While it will work smoothly with a limited number of processes, but if you are planning to do multitasking on this phone, then you might hate it. I mean, during my testing phase, I tried running different apps at the same time, the result of which the phone started freezing for a couple of seconds. Even the app switcher menu started to hang a little bit. Which might be because this smartphone packs very low amount of RAM.



So, if you are among those users who run different apps simultaneously, then you might notice a little bit lag sometimes. But still for the normal use, it works without any problem. Even the high-end games work without any problem.

Another good thing in the OS is the removal of unnecessary apps. It is good to see that YU Yunique comes without any third-party apps, which not only saves the storage space but also makes the User Interface a lot smooth and faster. The company has pre-installed some useful apps too. Like for example, the file manager. If you have used a stock version of Android running device, then you might know that stock version of Android doesn’t include any file manager. So, YU has helped its users by pre-installing one, which is good.

Another good thing is the addition of folder lock feature. With the help of which, you can easily lock apps in a single folder. If you want to use this feature, just tap on any group of apps and you will notice an “lock” icon (like the image below). Just tap on that and it will ask you to choose a pattern for the lock.



Although the company says that this smartphone comes pre-installed with a stock version of Android 5.1 Lollipop, but in reality this isn’t true. Ya! I agree that it runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, but it is not completely stock. While digging inside the OS, we found that the phone runs Cyanogen launcher by default. And there is no option to disable it. So, for example if you want to switch to the Google Now Launch, which comes pre-installed on stock version of Android, you will have to download it from the Google Play Store.

Yu Yunique comes with many useful apps, which you wouldn’t find in a stock version of Android. Like for example the stock Gallery app, the FM Radio app, Custom SMS app, old Web Browser and custom branded YUniverse mobile we browser. YU has partnered with Opera to pre-install a custom version of Opera Mobile web browser in YU Yunique, which is called as YUniverse. And for those who don’t like Opera that much, don’t worry there is also a Chrome browser. If you count then you will find that there are a total of three different web browsers pre-installed on this phone.

Performance

First thing first, the YU Yunique is among one of the very few low-cost smartphones which come with 4G LTE connectivity support. So, if you are buying Yunique, then you can enjoy Airtel 4G or any other 4G network on your phone.

Coming to the performance, the Yu Yunique is powered by Qulacomm Snapdragon 410 processor, clocked at 1.2GHz. It packs 1GB of RAM with 8GB of Internal Storage and microSD card support. As the memory of the phone is very low, so you might see some lag in this phone. But it will work smoothly on normal usage.

One of the best things in Yu Yunique is that there is no over-heating issue in this smartphone. Even during high gaming session, the smartphone worked fine without over-heating.

Now coming to the Benchmarking test, the Yu Yunique performed well on AnTuTu and GFXbench. On AnTuTu benchmarking test, the AnTuTu scored 20,093 points, which is very much similar to Xiaomi’s Redmi 2 smartphone. While on GFXbench it scored 9.4fps, which is also very identical to the Redmi 2. Overall, the performance is good and impressive at this price tag. I mean it is a lot better than any other smartphone in the Indian market at this particular price range. (Under Rs. 5,000).

Battery

The 2000 mAh battery inside Yu Yunique is non-removable. So, you can’t change the battery by yourself, you would have to visit the nearest YU service center to change it. We tested the battery of this smartphone in different conditions and we found that in normal usage, without any gaming or internet browsing (very less), it worked for around a day. But when we tried it in watching a movie or playing high-end games continuously, it lasted for around 9 hours.

In comparison, Xiaomi Redmi 2’s battery backup is a lot better than the Yu Yunique.

Wrap-Up

Keeping the negative points aside, the Yu Yunique is still one of the best 4G affordable smartphone in the Indian market. I mean if you are looking for a good smartphone, but your budget is just Rs. 5,000, then Yu Yunique is something you should buy. But there are still some disadvantages of Yu Yunique which can’t be ignored. Like for example, the flash. As Yunique is currently only available on Snapdeal, so you will have to register for the sales first if you want to buy this phone. Which is not only an annoying process but also makes it hard for the customers to buy it.

In simple words, Yu Yunique is best for those customers who want to buy a good looking smartphone with good features and an affordable price tag. But Yu Yunique is not good for those who are searching for a good camera phone with bigger battery life.