Micromax, on Thursday unveiled its new Yu brand of Cyanogen OS-based smartphones with the launch of Yu Yureka smartphone in the Indian market for Rs. 8,999. The smartphone, will go up for registrations via Amazon on Friday at 2 pm IST, and it will start shipping in the second week of January.

Initial adopters will get a leather back cover worth Rs. 999 free and the company is also offering free replacement or repair at the user's doorstep. The Yu Yureka (AO5510) smartphone runs on a custom-build of Cyanogen OS, Cyanogen OS 11, what Rahul Sharma, co-founder of Micromax, calls the ‘temple of customisation’ and ‘Android on steroids’, boasting of the thousands of features over and above stock Android.

Micromax Yu Yureka sports a 5.5 inch HD IPS display with 720 x 1280 pixels resolution with a pixel density of 267 ppi and Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The Cyanogen OS 11 build is based on Android 4.4.4 KitKat, and an Android 5.0 Lollipop-based build is promised. It features dual-SIM support, with micro-SIM cards slots (4G+3G). The smartphone features 4G LTE connectivity with up to 150Mbps download speeds and 50Mbps upload speeds, apart from Band 40 and Band 3 support. The device measures 154.8x78x8.8mm.

Micromax Yu Yureka is powered with a 1.5GHz octa-core Snapdragon processor with 2GB RAM. It comes with a 13 megapixel Sony Exmor CMOS sensor rear autofocus camera with an f/2.2 aperture and flash and a 5 megapixel front camera with fixed focus. It offers 16GB of inbuilt storage that is further expandable up to 32GB  using microSD card.
 
Yu Yureka sports a 2500 mAh battery with talk time up to 8 hours, standby time up to 310 hours, video playback time of up to six hours, and gaming up to 4 hours. For connectivity it includes - Bluetooth 4.0, Micro-USB, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, GPS, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Onboard sensors include an accelerometer, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, and gyroscope.

“There was a level of stagnation in the smartphone market ever since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, where the predominant mobile paradigm was to swipe, tap, and open an app. The partnership will see the company bring a number of global and local services to Cyanogen in India, which he described as the the fastest growing smartphone market in the world. There's a battle being fought in India, and Cyanogen+Yu, we intend to win that battle," said Kurt McMaster, Co-Founder of Cyanogen Inc.

As for privacy, Cyanogen said users will be able to edit and customise permissions of each app, apart from use features like Find & Wipe device, device encryption, Pin Scramble, Blacklist for spam callers, and a Protected Apps section.

Rahul Sharma clarified that the Yureka phone will feature an unlockable boot loader, kernel source, and full Android build tree. As for power users, Micromax claims warranty will not be voided on rooting the smartphone. Commenting on the feature, Rahul Sharma said, "You are the master, you control your destiny, you create the software, we'll put it on your devices".