Micromax’s sister company – YU has received a decent sales start for its first smartphone offering – the Yureka. The phone which runs Cyanogen OS offers a really amazing hardware at a budgeted price making it one of the serious competitors for best value for money smartphones. However, all is not well for the users who have already purchased the phone as there are a number of issues with the smartphone and on top of that the service and support provided by YU is non-existent. Let’s look at some of the most common issues with Yureka.
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1. Excessive Heating
Excessive heating of the Yureka is one issue that nearly every Yureka user is unhappy about. While this was expected considering the phone packs a powerful Snapdragon 615 processor in a pretty slim design, the users aren’t liking it. With that much of power, the phone generates a lot of heat especially when playing games and the heat can be felt quickly as the chassis of the phone starts heating up in minutes when a game is running.
Only advisable solution to heating (which works) is reducing the clock speed of the processor, but then a question arises as to why the phone packs a powerful processor if that power cannot be properly utilized.
2. Screen going blank during calls
Next comes an issue with the proximity sensor of nearly every Yureka whereby the screen fails to wake up when the phone is pulled away from the ear while making or receiving calls. This makes accessing the in-call menu and disconnecting an active call a troublesome task. This is most commonly faced in situation where there is low lighting and a long duration call was placed.
Users need to either wait for the other party to end the call or press the power key to wake up the screen and then access the in-call menu. An update was pushed to Yureka devices which was supposed to fix the issues with proximity sensor, but that barely improved the situation.
3. Random Restarts
Not sure what causes it, but the phone sometimes does restart on its own at random intervals. Sometimes while it is being used and at other times just while it was sleeping. It could be related to the excessive heating of the phone causing the CPU to force a shut down, but there can be other reasons as well such as a Bug in an app or the OS itself.
4. Charging, Battery Drain & Poor Calibration
Another one of most reported issues, the battery of Yureka is already small when we look at the screen size and the power-hungry processor. Then there are serious battery drain or calibration issues related to the phone. The phone’s battery sometimes drops considerable levels while the phone was not even in use. It would sometimes rise up after a while, but at other times it wouldn’t, making the phone a pretty risky investment as it can die at any moment.
Charging the phone seems to be a problematic task as well. The phone takes a really long time to move from 99% to 100%. The 1% wouldn’t bother many, but a lot of users who like unplugging their phones only when they reach 100% get frustrated. It takes hours to reach that 100% charging mark.
5. Poor Camera
The phone boasts of a 13MP camera with a CMOS sensor from Sony, but that’s only on paper. The quality of images captured by the camera barely compares to 8MP shots taken by a good camera phone. No idea if it is an issue with the software that processes the images or the key hardware, but there’s something missing making the camera a shame for the 13MP tag. We’re not claiming here that other smartphones at this price come with decent shooters, just that the 13MP seems like an exaggerated number for the quality of images it captures.
6. Back Cover Fades Away
The back cover on the Yureka is much talked about for its unique-ish texture called the moonstone finish. However, users have reported that the texture starts fading especially if the phone is often used with wet hands. This puts the manufacturing process of the back cover in question. It seems that the texture was applied over the back covers rather than them inheriting it.
Best bet is to buy a case for the phone to extend the life of the phone’s original cover.
7. Poor Loudspeaker, Okay-ish Mic
If you’re a music lover, the loudspeaker on the Yureka wouldn’t please you at all. The loudspeaker outputs a seriously low volume and that too starts getting distorted when raised to full. Similarly, the Mic wouldn’t get any praises. It just works out, but the people using their phone in crowded places or riding a bike will have a hard time making the other party understand.
Users have also reported that the loudspeaker stops working at times and requires a restart before any audio would come out of them again. A bunch of users are also having issues with their phones where the earpiece speaker stops working and they are forced to take calls on loudspeaker or headphones.
8. Nearly Zero Service & Support
When users face issues, they start looking for support. However, contacting YU support was barely a satisfactory experience for the Yureka users. The support line generally stays busy and when it connects, there’s nobody to answer the call. In rare circumstances where a call is connected to a support representative the representative fails to provide a satisfactory response. The support staff is not only untrained, they also don’t show the willingness of helping the users. Those trying to contact them via email need to wait for weeks to get a reply the initial reply.
A few lucky ones who managed to register their complains with the YU support are waiting for weeks to get a follow-up from YU regarding the issues being faced by them. Don’t know how these issues will be solved without a support team which has the knowledge and patience to deal with them.
Yureka just isn’t for everybody
As announced during the introduction of YU brand and the launch of Yureka, the brand is targeting the geeky population which loves taking risks and tries to sort out issues themselves. Hence, YU is probably targeting the wrong audience by making it available to everybody or else they just failed to do it right with their first smartphone. The phone faces a lot of issues, some of which are software related and geeky minds would love solving them out themselves, but the non tech-savvy population is only going to wait for YU to sort them out which might be too much of expectation from them. The other hardware related ones aren’t easy to sort out without proper support from YU, which isn’t happening as of now.
It is not just the company’s fault when users expect too much for a product which is already too good for the price paid. Problems related to the Battery Backup and Heating of the phone aren’t something which even the company can solve. The phone comes with a smaller battery as compared to its needs so it is expected to deplete faster, similarly for the heating, the phone will heat up because of a powerful processor resting in a thin chassis. The above two issues come in a huge number and probably frustrate the support staff resulting in an unsatisfactory experience for the users who genuinely need support for serious issues such as hardware breakdown. Thus 3 of these issues could be avoided if perspective buyers sum up their needs and compare them with what the phone offers instead of just buying it because it is selling like hotcakes.
Feeling like this post is exaggerated? Read the comments here and you might want to rethink. Feel free to leave your opinion below, whether related to the phone or this post, positive or negative.
