The background of Yu Televentures and the Yu Yuphoria, a Redmi 2 competitor

In 2015, Indian buyers are not interested with the launch of flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, LG G Flex 2, HTC One M9+ and the upcoming LG G4. Nor are they interested a lot in last year’s flagships and upper mid-range phones above the price range of INR 25,000.

Why is that? I mean, we’ve always known that this market prefers budget phones, but in the last year or so, this has been magnified. The entry of Motorola with the Moto G, followed by the entry of Xiaomi and the rest of the Chinese OEMs changed the face of the market.

Of course this resulted in a knock-on effect and while the consumers certainly benefited, there were other parties which lost out. As in, the global smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony.

Also indirectly affected were the Indian phone companies like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn, Intex, iBall, etc which hitherto had been benefiting from going to China, selecting a phone from a relatively unknown OEM, branding it and then coming back and selling it in India. It was a nice business strategy…

…which was in the danger of coming to an abrupt end. So, as the Chinese directly entered the Indian market, companies like Micromax reacted to retain their market share. The reaction was to form a new online-only brand which was a subsidiary of Micromax.

In this way Yu Televentures – a subsidiary of Micromax was formed. The key feature of this company is online sales only plus a community driven focus.

As you know, the way Xiaomi, Honor, Lenovo and others have been able to sell phones at such affordable prices has to do with the fact that there’s no middlemen involved. The wholesalers and retailers, the expensive offline marketing strategies… all of them are absent.

You can’t compete with an online sales only strategy by running a full offline presence plus online sales. This is the reality which even companies such as Microsoft and HTC are coming to terms to. And nor can they take their business to online only, as that would lead to tremendous backlash from their core customers.

Micromax faced that same problem (added with a low-tier reputation), and that led them to forming Yu. Genius.

The Yu Yureka competed with the Redmi Note 4G, and later on others such as the Lenovo A7000 and the Honor 4X as well. Despite some issues and the whole Cyanogen-OnePlus-Micromax fiasco, it was a great seller.

And now Yu is back, wanting to have some more success, with a phone designed at a cheaper, INR 7000 price point. This is going head to head with the Xiaomi Redmi 2, the Lenovo A6000 and A6000 Plus, as well as the Moto E LTE 2015, all of them priced between INR 7000 and INR 8500, and all of them having Snapdragon 410.

With the background out of the way, let’s get to the phone itself, the Yu Yuphoria.

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The newest Android distribution chart is out, courtesy of Google. It contains data of the first week of May 2015. These charts are always interesting to see and comment on, because of the unique, controversial nature of the Android update scenario.

After several missteps along the way such as the mythical Android Update Alliance, for the past few years everyone has accepted the situation of Android updates.

Everyone’s accepted it because they know it’s not going to change. What with the reality of open-source AOSP Android, Google Android and OEM skinned Android – things were always going to be a mess, and marketing strategies are even more so.

Artificial obsolescence. That’s what it’s all about. Remind me to explain more on a future date, but moving on…

It’s 2015 and the world has now seen the rise of Android 5.x Lollipop. It hasn’t been straightforward to say the least. An update as big as Lollipop would never be adopted so fast. Of course that’s correct.

But nobody anticipated the problems that Lollipop would actually bring. For many it was a disaster, especially the original releases. Although Google fixed many of the Lollipop problems via updates, others are still remaining. Case in point: the memory leaks, which still haven’t been entirely fixed in the latest Android 5.1.

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Android flagships in 2015 have been launching steadily since CES in January, each with their own strengths, each with their own flaws and potential deal-breakers.

For example the Galaxy S6 has a great display and camera but poor battery life. The HTC One M9 has a great design and speakers but poor camera in auto mode. The Xperia Z4 (or the Z3+ for international markets if rumours are to be believed) is disappointing all around, with some Xperia Z3 strengths and stagnation in camera and battery.

LG’s own curved G Flex 2 posted disappointing results in display, design, CPU throttling and battery life. It’s been a weird year so far for Android flagships, with the one-phone-to-beat-them-all (Galaxy S II-style) proving quite elusive to find.

But LG isn’t done yet. The G Flex 2 was a sideshow, the real thing comes now.

This is the LG G4.

After all, this is how you launch a flagship phone. LG has pulled out all the stops with the G4, providing us with a lot to write about, and even when they didn’t pull out all the stops there’s still a lot to comment on those decisions.

Dealing with things like Quantum IPS Display, an optional vegetable tanned leather back, colour spectrum sensor, hexa-core processor and the ever-important microSD card slot – you can see there’s no shortage of flagship specifications here. So let’s get to it.

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People using Android smartphones as their primary camera is now a known phenomenon. Ever since the HTC Dream – the first Android phone – had a terrible 3MP camera, the quality of cameras on Android smartphones has been steadily improving.

Unfortunately, the rate of improvement still hasn’t got to the point where most Android phones have great cameras.

Sure, they’re improving all the time. And sure, the latest top-end smartphones like the Galaxy S6 and the newly announced LG G4 have impressive cameras, more than capable of defeating the iPhone camera and the cameras of old top-notch Lumias.

But the trouble with phones like the Galaxy S6 is that they’re expensive, far too expensive for the vast majority of buyers.

What we need is great cameras in budget and mid-range phones, and what with the new crop of affordable budget phones from the Chinese OEMs and now the long overdue focus on the mid-range market, it sure does look like smartphone cameras on Android have a bright future. But is that enough in the present?

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The Xiaomi Mi 4i and the Asus Zenfone 2 couldn’t be anymore different. One is made by a Chinese startup smartphone company, while the other is made by a Taiwanese OEM/ODM. One of them is a phone “Made for India,” whereas the other is a global flagship. One has a 64-bit Qualcomm SoC using ARM cores, whereas the other has an 64-bit Intel Atom chipset. One has a 5-inch display, the other uses different 5.5-inch displays for different versions.

The prices are different too. The Mi 4i is priced at INR 13,000. And the Zenfone 2 is priced at – err, there are in total four versions depending on display resolution, processor, RAM and storage.

The cheapest version of the Zenfone 2, the ZE550ML, has been launched at INR 13,000 – the same price as that of the Mi 4i. The ZE551ML 2GB version upgrades the screen resolution to 1080p and keeps the rest same. For that, the price is increased to INR 15,000.

Then there are the Zenfone 2 4GB versions, which increase the RAM as well as the clock speed of the processor, but these can’t be compared to the Mi 4i, as they’re in a completely different price bracket. The ZE551ML 4GB RAM phone comes in two versions: 32GB and 64GB respectively (both of them with microSD). They’ll be available at INR 20,000 and INR 23,000 respectively.

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Sony hasn’t had the best of luck with the international smartphone market recently, although they experienced strong growth in India in early 2014. From the start of 2015 we’ve seen a lot of changes at Sony, rumours that Sony could sell its mobile and TV division, statements from the CEO that an exit could not be ruled out, more statements that “they were no longer targeting sales growth for the mobile division,” restructuring and heavy losses… you get the idea.

With the market now focusing on the low-end for more market share and more growth, one would expect Sony to have responded to the challenge by coming out with great budget devices. Right now though, Sony is firmly focusing in the high-end of the smartphone market with the announcement of the Xperia Z4 via a press release in Japan.

Availability has only been specified for Japan (release in summer) right now – there is no word of an international launch.

Update: It seems that the Xperia Z4 is actually a Japan-exclusive phone for now. Instead Sony will be premiering an international flagship smartphone later this year. In a statement, the Japanese company didn’t commit to any broader international launch for the Z4, but nor has it ruled out the possibility. A Sony spokesperson told Android Central it’s “considering the feasibility in other markets.” 

It seems likely that the Xperia Z4 will be marketed as the Xperia Z3+ for international markets. The launch is said to happen in May.

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