Yu Yureka: Billed As A Top Performer, But Does It Deliver As Promised? – Benchmarking And Performance Review Reveal Surprising Results

When Micromax owned Yu Televentures announced the launch of their flagship Yu Yureka very few things were known about the phone except that it would be a CyanogenMod based phone. But this phone has now been around for a sufficiently long time in the market and has been billed as a high quality phone for its price category.

Before we take a closer look at the Yu Yureka’s performance by analyzing its benchmarking scores let’s take a quick glance at the specs of the Yu Yureka.

Yu Yureka: specs

Powered by an Android 4.4.4 based Cyanogen OS 11, running on a 1.5 GHz Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor with 2GB RAM and 16 GB internal memory, the Yureka has been billed as a top notch phone for its price category. The Yu Yureka boasts of a 5.5 inch display and comes with a 13 megapixel rear and a 5 megapixel front camera. The battery on this model is a decent 2500 mAh and the ppi value stands at 267.

Here are a few more specs on the Yu Yureka:

Yu Yureka: Benchmarking

The AnTuTu benchmarking tool for Android v5.6.2 was used to benchmark the Yu Yureka. The overall score looks pretty impressive for a smartphone that costs just Rs. 8,999.

Then again while benchmarking a smartphone one should always weigh in on where a particular phone stands when compared to the current industry leaders in terms of performance.

As the ranking graph clearly suggests the Yu Yureka doesn’t exactly outperform some of its competitors, other than the Xiaomi Redmi Note, which is perhaps its main competitor in the budget phone category. While it would be unfair to compare the Yu Yureka with a OnePlus One, it isn’t a far cry to state that there is more room for improvement in the budget phone category when it comes to performance scores.

Yu Yureka: Camera Performance

If you ever want to understand the difference between two smartphones offering the same camera specs but whose prices are dramatically different you should observe the camera on the Yu Yureka and compare it to some of the brands that cost more than it.

The Yu Yureka has a 13 megapixel rear camera. If I were to rephrase that sentence, I would say “The Yu Yureka has the worst 13 megapixel rear camera” one could hope to encounter. Having used and tested several other smartphones previously I would say the quality of the camera on this phone is disappointing to say the least.

While the picture above might excite Jim Beam fans, it doesn’t exactly excite camera enthusiasts. Quite clearly this isn’t the quality one would expect from a 13 megapixel camera, especially because there are other smartphones with the same spec that produce much better quality pictures. I wouldn’t recommend the Yu Yureka to anyone looking to buy it just for its camera specs.

Yu Yureka: Battery performance

The 2500 mAh battery on this phone is another disappointment. Not a disappointment in terms of the specs on offer rather it’s the battery performance that doesn’t live up to what is expected of a 2500 mAh battery. After a full charge, the battery dies down dramatically while playing a game or while browsing the Internet. It’s safe to say the Yu Yureka underdelivers in terms of battery performance.

Yu Yureka: Stability Test

Running a device through a stability test is pretty important because this is what determines whether a device’s hardware is able to maintain an acceptable level in temperature rise when the CPU load increases.

If you notice the rise in temperature in the above graph you would realize that the Yureka tends to heat up pretty quickly. The graph shows a sudden rise in temperature from around 37 degrees to almost 43 degrees in a matter of seconds. Another thing to notice are the fluctuations in the stability curve. As the temperature rises, the stability drops by almost 10 points, from a little over 71 to a little over 61.

Notice the continuing dual trend of temperature rising and stability points dropping drastically in the above graph.

And this last graph shows the temperature eventually stabilizing at around 45 degrees along with the corresponding stability curve which also stabilizes slightly at around 59 points. The overall rise in temperature during the stability test comes to 8 degrees and the overall fall in stability curve comes to around 12 points.

The stability test for the Yu Yureka revealed that once the temperature of the devices stabilizes the device’s hardware manages to stabilize slightly, but if the rise in temperature is a sudden spike the device fails to stabilize. This might also explain the Yu Yureka’s poor battery performance because when a device’s temperature rises sharply and it is unable to stabilize quickly it is effectively tapping out to heat energy.

If I had to sum up the Yu Yureka’s overall performance I would say it might come across as the best performing phone in its price category, but it isn’t the most reliable hardware you would want to own. The camera and the battery aren’t the Yu Yureka’s best features, but for Rs. 8,999 it isn’t a bad buy considering it offers better processing power compared to its competitors in the budget phone category.