Yu Unicorn Review: Not a chunicorn?
Yu Televentures' quest to redefine the flagship smartphone continues with its latest offering, the Yu Yunicorn. Its previous attempt, the Yutopia (Review), was an ambitious smartphone which looked tempting on paper, but didn't quite fulfil our expectations when we tested it.
This time with the Yunicorn, the company has decided to dial it down a bit and focus on a few key areas such as software and services. The smartphone launches in the crowded, cutthroat sub-Rs. 15,000 segment, which is not an easy space to compete in by any measure. The Yu Yunicorn will have to prove its mettle against the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Review), Lenovo Zuk Z1 (Review) and Moto G4 Plus (Review). Let's see how well it manages to do so.
One look at the phone and it's easy to see that the Yunicorn is the best looking and best built Yu smartphone to date. The metal unibody is well crafted and the lightly brushed look for the back is a good aesthetic touch. It's not very slim at 8.5mm and is also a bit on the heavy side at 172 grams but we managed to get used to it. The front of the phone looks virtually identical to that of the Oppo F1 Plus while the rear camera section reminds us a lot of the Redmi Note 3. It's not uncommon for designs to overlap, but we expect at least some originality when it comes to design.
The 5.5-inch full-HD display has a dense enough pixel count for sharp pictures and text. Sunlight legibility is fairly good and we didn't face any issue with the touch response. The screen gets protective glass from NEG (Nippon Electric Glass). The borders on each side of the screen are slim. There's a notification light above it and a physical home button below. The latter also has an integrated fingerprint sensor, which works well for unlocking the phone.
