You Unique Review
We can also expect to see tremendous enthusiasm about this device. The phone has an HD screen, 4G LTE support, a fast processor and a high-quality camera. And all this for less than Rs 5,000. If the company is successful in creating harmony between demand and supply, then it is possible that it will completely overtake Xiaomi and other Chinese brand smartphones in the market. This will also affect Samsung and other high-end device manufacturing companies. This will be very interesting.
Look and Design
U Unique is a very compact phone by today’s standards and the reason for this is its 4.7 inch screen. The dimensions of the phone are 134.5 x 67.5 x 8.3 mm and weight is 128 grams, although it feels smaller. The overall look is very premium, but as soon as you hold it in your hands, the illusion seems to be broken. You will notice that the rear part is made of plastic with a rubber-like coating on it. Usually, after prolonged use, it starts peeling off at different places or becomes a little sticky.
The U brand logo is placed at the top of the screen. There is a front camera on one side and an LED sensor next to the earpiece grill. The micro-USB port is at the bottom and the 3.5mm headset socket is at the top. We did not like that the power button was placed in between the volume buttons. As long as we had this phone, we couldn’t get used to this setup and kept pressing the wrong buttons.
Camera with LED flash is provided in the rear part. Its design is very similar to the camera setup of Yu Euphoria. The device has another U brand logo at the bottom of the rear panel.
A micro-SIM slot is built on either side of the camera lens and there’s also a micro SD card slot. The Yu Unique comes with a charger and a USB cable. For some reason the company has given bright blue color LED in the charger. Its light is disturbing in the dark.
Specifications and Software
Yu is not the first product of the company in which an attempt has been made to introduce powerful hardware in a budget phone, but the company is gradually getting better in this matter. The smartphone comes with a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor and 1 GB of RAM, but the company is emphasizing on the phone’s HD 720×1280 pixel display and LTE support in the marketing. The inbuilt storage of the handset is 8 GB and the battery is 2000 mAh. The rear camera has an 8 megapixel sensor and the front camera has a 2 megapixel sensor.
In almost every way, the Yu Unique phone is similar to Xiaomi Redmi 2. However, it is Rs 1,000 cheaper and sleeker too. Most of the differences between the two devices will be visible in the software.
Yu Unique runs on the stock version of Android 5.1 Lollipop. This is the first handset in the Yu family to run on CyanogenOS 12. The company says that if users want, they can install Cyanogen.
Yu has launched a new web browser which has been named YuUniverse. Basically it is a customized version of Opera. Apart from one or two features, the operating system is completely stock version of Android, which is a good thing.
camera
The camera performance of Xiaomi’s cheap smartphones has been good. In this regard, U Unique seems to be lagging behind. The pictures taken with the smartphone camera had less detail than we expected. The pictures looked good on the camera screen or when posted on Facebook, but the lack of viewing on the computer screen was clearly visible.
The pictures taken at night turned out to be even weaker. When there was too much motion, they became blurry. Unless the picture was taken in direct light, the shots were very noisy. We had trouble locking focus on the subject at times. It also turns out that results will be much better if you don’t rely on autofocus.
The camera app is fine. The video output of the camera was also not great, but we also have to take into account the price of the phone. Perhaps we have become used to more. It is clear that in other respects, even though this device is trying to compete with the devices above its range, the camera is very average.
performance
We did not face any problem in using this phone. The device felt more expensive than its price. The screen is sharp and crisp, but the viewing angles are not the best. It is troublesome to read anything on the handset screen in sunlight.
Our 1080 pixel resolution test videos played smoothly on the handset. The sound from the built in speaker is loud but it gets scattered even at low volume. The good thing is that even after playing games for a long time, we did not feel the handset getting hot. The battery lasted 9 hours and 12 minutes on the video loop test. The benchmark test results were also decent.
our decision
You Unique is identified by its price. In this case it beats Xiaomi Redmi 2 by a huge margin. It’s a better device in some respects, like its distinct style and stock Android experience. However, the battery is weak and the camera performance is also average. Apart from this, it is available through unique flash sale which is not lost on the consumer. At the same time, in view of the increasing demand in India, Xiaomi has improved the supply and has also made the sales process easier.
With You Unique you will have to make some compromises. If you are ready for that then save Rs 1,000 and be happy. By the way, the performance of both the phones is good. The displays are great too with 4G LTE support. Till some time ago, a smartphone with such great specifications could not be imagined at this price. But today the user has many options. This is a great time for those buying cheap phones.
