India’s largest smartphone manufacturer Micromax unveiled a budget smartphone called the Yureka, which costs just $140. The 5.5-inch phablet runs CyanogenMod’s custom ROM that’s based on Android KitKat, and features mid-range specifications. The Yureka is part of the company’s Yu series of smartphones.
Micromax’s newest handset arrives just a few days after the company pushed the Indian government to ban the sale of the Cyanogenmod version of the OnePlus One in the country. Now, Micromax’s phones are the only ones in India with CyanogenMod’s highly-customizable OS built in. The timing of the ban can hardly be described as coincidental, as the OnePlus is a well-priced, highly specced phone that’s already popular worldwide. Now that OnePlus has agreed to stopped selling the CyanogenMod version of its handset, the Yureka, and Micromax’s other phones, are perfectly positioned to snap up new customers.
Micromax’s Yu Yureka boasts a 5.5-inch screen with a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution and a pixel density of 267 ppi. Micromax packed Qualcomm’s 64-bit, 1.5GHz Snapdragon 615 octa-core processor under the hood along with 2GB of RAM. The phablet comes with a measly 16GB of storage onboard, but it’s expandable up to 128GB via a MicroSD card slot. A 25oomAh battery powers the phone, which sports a 13-megapixel back camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. Luckily, the Yureka supports 4G LTE, 3G, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS.
The specifications are similar to Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 4G, which coincidentally could be about to go on sale, after the Chinese brand was given permission to sell its Qualcomm-powered hardware in India, following a court injunction over a patent row.
According to a report from the Times of India, Micromax will sell the Yureka for $140 on Amazon’s Indian site on December 19. The phablet will be available in a “moonstone” finish.
