YU Yunique – First Impressions

Yu Televentures, a Micromax subsidiary unveiled the cheapest 4G enabled handset in India by the name of YU Yunique. The device comes under an interesting price point of INR 4999. Ironically the name of this device is “Yunique” but we believe it’s merely a trimmed down version of the YU Yuphoria.

For the last few days we have been using the YU Yunique smartphone regularly and we found it fairly well for the price.

DESIGN

The Yunique looks like a miniature Yuphoria based on similar design profile. The device features a known design with Saturn rings on the back. The screen is protected by Coring Gorilla Glass 3 which is an absolute rare sight at this price point. The device has a weird triple button layout on the right with two volume buttons and in between is sandwiched the power button.
The back comes with matte finish, which reminds us of the recently-launched Micromax Canvas Xpress 2.
The removable plastic back has a long speaker grill near the bottom (the actual speaker is smaller and placed in one corner). The back panel exists only to cover the two SIM card slots and microSD card slot.

Overall the device feels good in hand, the build quality of this device is okay and the choice of materials used to manufacture this device are also above average.

SPECIFICATIONS

Giving a brief description about its specifications, YU Yunique features a 4.7-inch HD display with 1280 x 720 pixel screen and Gorilla Glass 3 protection and the device is powered by a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor with Adreno 306 GPU coupled with 1GB of RAM (Although at this price point we weren’t expecting more but 1 GB of RAM today? Pass) along with 8GB of built-in storage.
The device offers an 8 megapixel rear camera and a 2 megapixel front camera – both of which seems decent as far as our first interaction is concerned. The phone houses a 2000 mAh non-removable battery. Talking about storage the device is packed with 8GB of internal storage out of which 4.04GB is available. The device also features USB OTG functionality so you can use a flash drive with it directly via an OTG cable to further extend the use case.

SOFTWARE

Yu Yunique runs Android 5.1 Lollipop out-of-the-box and not Cyanogen OS (Strange but True). You can still use Cyanogenmod though by simply downloading it from Yu’s website and flashing it, without voiding your warranty. The Yunique is running an almost-stock version of Android Lollipop, with some tweaks added by Yu. We have YUniverse browser pre-installed which is quite laggy so we decided to disable it and use Google Chrome instead. The smartphone has on-screen Android navigation buttons instead of capacitive ones.

PERFORMANCE

On the very first boot the device performed right on the mark. We installed multiple social networking applications with emails and instant messaging apps all around and it worked absolutely fine standing by our expectations.
It could easily handle day-to-day tasks. But when It comes to multitasking the device starts to slow down – the culprit being 1GB of RAM which appears to be the bottleneck of this device (the ‘I told you’ moment). Talking about gaming experience which is an resource intensive task, the device performed average. But the highlight of the device is its High-Definition screen which is bright and crisp for a 5k smartphone.
While using the device for a couple of days the screen bothers me a little considering its touch response. Its definitely not one of the smoothest screen.

CAMERA

The YU Yunique features a 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash with f/2.0 aperture. Users can record full HD resolution videos, while most phones in this price range are limited at 720p. The front camera is fitted with a 2MP sensor with f/2.4 aperture. The camera interface is simple and easy to operate with a list of modes and features are available like beautification mode, HDR, Sports and many more. The camera performed good in daylight but Low-light performance was disappointing though, even with HDR mode enabled which we were expecting at this price point.

OUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS

While this may not be the most spec loaded device available in market but for a price of INR 4999 it makes a good option for those who are looking for 4G upgrade now that 4G is rolling out in the country.

The handset is not freely available now but continues the flash sale method exclusively on Snapdeal. Buyers must register in order to participate in the sale. The first flash sale is scheduled for 15 September at 12 noon.