Yu Yureka Plus user reviews indicate that the phone has problems in three areas – heat, lagging and poor battery back-up.
In a rare departure from the norm, Amazon India has chosen not to let buyers of the phone give their feedback on the model and publish the same, which has made it difficult to evaluate the model.
Normally, any item that is bought on Amazon can be reviewed on the website. However, in case of Yu Yureka Plus, Amazon is not letting any buyer post public reviews on the phone.
This is similar to the strategy adopted by Flipkart initially when it launched the Xiaomi Mi4 earlier this year. Ultimately, the Mi4 turned out to be a not-so-successful launch, with users reporting heating problems.
In case of Yu Yureka Plus too, heating problems seem to be a major issue going by the reviews of the phone on social media and forums.
UPDATE: The phone’s price has been cut to Rs 8,999 in time for the sale on Aug 6.
User reviews and feedback is a crucial factor in evaluating online-only phones such as Lenovo K3 Note and Yu Yureka Plus as a person cannot go to a physical store and check out the model. As a result, he or she has to rely on what the others who have already bought the phone have to say about it. In case of Lenovo K3 Note, for example, the camera was considered its weakpoint by many users.
Companies trying to restrict the availability of user reviews are not helping the situation either. Both Yu Yureka Plus and Lenovo K3 Note sell 50,000-1,00,000 units per week each. If user reviews continue to be blocked on the websites that sell these phones, sales may decline.
Yu has managed to communicate the good things about the 5.5-inch phone to everyone using advertising and mainstream media reviews. However, it is the actual user who can give the most genuine feedback.
And in this case, most buyers of the phone have had to rely on forums and social media to give their opinion of the phone.
Before going into the problems, we must recollect the positives about the Yureka Plus according to the users.
First is the sturdy build, especially when compared to the Lenovo K3 Note, which doesn’t come with any branded toughened glass like Dragontrail or Gorilla Glass. Most reviews have mentioned that the Yureka Plus is pretty sturdy.
The second good thing about the phone is the display. Most people have praised the phone’s full-HD display. Just like in the case of Lenovo K3 Note, the Yureka Plus has a splendid display, and this has been borne out by the opinion of those who have used the model.
The third big improvement is in the back camera. While the resolution of the Yureka Plus’ camera is the same as its predecessor, the underlying sensor has been upgraded to Sony IMX214 from Sony IMX135. This seems to have fixed a widespread complaint about the original Yureka model – that of poor camera quality.
YU YUREKA PLUS NEGATIVE POINTS
Now, let’s look at the problem areas, as reported by user reviews.
Broadly, there are only two issues that have been highlighted so far — heating or slowness, and poor battery back-up.
In a way, these are perhaps the result of the improvements that have been made in the hardware of the Yu Yureka to move it to the Plus version. The biggest change is the full-HD display compared to the 720p display that was found in the original model.
Users have reported that the Snapdragon 615 processor found in the Yureka Plus is often found struggling to cope with the increased load. As a result, the phone has been made out as slow and generating too much heat.
“Do not purchase this if can afford more than 10 k for a phone,” pointed out user Mac2015 on a prominent forum. “Heating is bearable, the display is HD at the cost of performance.”
In fact, part of the problem may be the processor itself. The Snapdragon 615 is a mid-range chipset. In terms of processing power, the Snapdragon 615 scores only around 650 points in single-core mode according to Geekbench 3 benchmarks.
On the other hand, the MediaTek MT6752 — which is found in models like the Lenovo K3 Note and Meizu M1 Note (now available for Rs 9,999 on Amazon) — scores 800.
Switch to overall processing power using all cores, and the difference is even more apparent. The SD 615 scores about 2,600 points and the MediaTek MT6752 scores about 4,000.
The other two problems, besides lagging, are heating and poor battery back-up. In a way, the heating problem is also related to the processor, or rather, to an overworked processor, and is not a separate problem altogether.
However, it was poor battery back-up that is without doubt the most complained about shortcoming of the Yu Yureka Plus on forums and social media. Many suggested that Yu should have ensured at least a 2.8 Ah battery on the model.
User Ashu pointed out in his review: “Charging time is more than 6 hrs, phone lags a lot, heats up very much, battery discharges by simply playing 5 mins video.”
“My first opinion is very poor battery (very slow charging),” pointed out another user Akhil HH, adding that the phone, however, had “good display quality” and was light in weight.
“With 2500mAh battery and 5.5 inch screen size, I am in fear of battery storage as (the) big screen consumes more battery,” user Vishal said. “So it should be at least 3000 mAh, but performance wise it’s (phone is) good… played games like asphalt8, subway and all works great so you can buy it if you do not consider battery backup.”
One such user, who doesn’t seem to mind the battery, is Sanky. “Excellent features but battery back up is avg. But not a big deal its awsome phone in this range, fully happy with it,” he said.
In fact, those who will be happy with 16 GB of memory, the Meizu M1 Note, available at Rs 9,999, is likely to offer a better deal. Or if they can shell out another Rs 2,000, they can look to the Meizu M2 Note, to be available on Amazon next week for Rs 11,999. The Both Meizu phones have got excellent reviews from users and experts so far.
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