Yu Televentures, the other Micromax, has been on the quiet side for a while. While its back has been turned, intense activity on the part of the Chinese brigade has kept the mobile market replete with options. The customer is spoiled for choice and needs a very good reason to look at anyone new — or even look again at someone old.

But never underestimate the interest of young customers in a budget phone that seems to give something ever so slightly different from the others. And so it may be with the Yureka Black, which is, as the name indicates, very black indeed. And very glossy and shiny. Against that colour, two shiny antenna lines make for a snazzy accent. In general, reviewers have described the Yureka Black as quite the premium looker.

Calls for a case While I strongly agree that it’s an eye-catching little five-inch device, there are a few things that plague its prettiness. The first is fingerprint smudges. Now that’s inevitable with all glossy phones and it is so here too, though not half as bad as one might expect. There’s a little cloth in the box, which just shows that Yu knows. Clearly some effort has been made to coat it with something that doesn’t exactly play host to fingerprints. In this, it certainly does better than some more expensive phones. The HTC U series comes to mind. But you can’t push it beyond a point and if you don’t watch it, you could get this shiny surface very scratched.So it’s best to let it don the transparent plastic back cover provided in the box. Then you’re safe.

Another thing you’ll be safe from is the device slipping away because it happens to be one of the most slippery phones I’ve ever come across. If someone were to nudge or bump into you a little when you’re holding it unprotected by its case, there’s no telling. In fact, this device is so slippery it’s difficult to quickly put in the USB cable to charge it — the connector keeps slipping against the edge of the phone. Sadly, a case instantly takes away from that dramatic piano black. It’s still a little slippery with the case, which should have been textured on the sides. But then it is made of metal with some coating so the phone may well withstand a few drops.

Decent specs But moving on to how it works. The Yureka Black’s fingerprint sensor does a pretty good job. It registers a print quick enough and then opens up with good speed. Waking up to reveal its 1080p screen, it looks a little lacking in sharpness and contrasts. It’s bright enough, but immediately gives the feeling of not being a top notch display, somehow. That’s despite the 2.5D curved look. Even the viewing angles are less than stellar. But one can live with it easily enough. The home screens house the apps as there’s no separate app space, and luckily there isn’t an over abundance of pre-loaded apps either. If I remember right, the original Yureka had some services built in and it looked like they were on to something there. But that’s gone missing in this version of the phone. There are many Yu customisations including gestures, one-handed mode, etc. These are things we’ve seen before, but that doesn’t mean they’re not nice to have.

Sadly, the Black is still on Android 6.0. That’s when Nougat will soon be giving way to Android O. Not that it works very badly or anything. The buzz is that an upgrade to Nougat will happen on this device. The phone’s specs include an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 MSM8937 64-bit processor working with 4 GB RAM which isn’t bad for this little thing. It even handles multitasking fairly well but very power intensive tasks are better done on a more powerful and refined device.

There’s 32 GB of internal storage, expandable via memory card. The phone supports 4G VoLTE and has a hybrid SIM setup. There’s a 3,000mAh battery, which is not small for a device of this size. You can’t expect fast charging at this price. You’ll also need to keep a charger around if you use it more than moderately for the entire day. The 13 MP and 8 MP cameras are your average fare with the front camera being a little more enjoyable to use.

It isn’t easy to enter the game in the current mobile scenario. It’s probably equally difficult to re-enter it. Micromax, with and without Yu, seems to have rather lost the early mover advantage it had and now has a job regaining the momentum in the face of stiff competition from Xiaomi, Lenovo, Motorola, Oppo, Vivo, Asus and countless other players. But if you’re a Micromax or Yu fan and trust the brand more than the Chinese ones, give it a shot. At its price, it’s not a bad performer at all.

Price: ₹8,999

Pros: Dramatic looking, nice size for some, works smooth, quick fingerprint sensor

Cons: Far too slippery, smudge and scratch-prone, display not sharp and high contrast, still on Android 6, camera distinctly average

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