Everyone compares to the OnePlus 2, but the Qiku Q Terra and the Honor 7 also make for viable alternatives to the Yutopia. Let's compare their performance and camera to figure out.
This year just had to end with a smartphone that claims to break all barriers and be more powerful than any other. We’re talking of course, about the Yu Yutopia, the self proclaimed ‘most powerful smartphone ever’. We saw it, we tried it, we reviewed it and now, all that is left is to compare it. We looked around the Digit Test Labs and found the Qiku Q Terra and the Honor 7 by Huawei. While the Yutopia costs Rs. 24,999, the Qiku Q Terra costs Rs. 21,999, the Honor 7 is slightly more expensive at Rs. 22,999. They’ve both direct competitors to the Yutopia though.
You’re probably wondering why we don’t have the OnePlus 2 here. Well, for one, everyone’s thinking of that and frankly, as we wrote in our review, we think the OnePlus 2 is a better phone than the Yutopa. More importantly though, ask yourself, if you could save a few thousand bucks, wouldn’t you be interested? The Qiku Q Terra and the Honor 7 are both viable alternatives to the Yutopia that way. While you save Rs. 3,000 and 2,000 on them, respectively.
Camera
On the camera front, the 21MP shooter on the Yutopia leaves little to choose against the Qiku Q Terra’s dual-13MP and Honor 7’s 20MP cameras. Under normal outdoor conditions, it takes a really close look to find any difference between the images and even then, there’s little differentiating the phones. The Qiku Q Terra’s 20MP camera may be a tad better with the details, but the difference is really small.
Yu Yutopia Camera Samples (L-R) Outdoor normal light, Studio White Lights, Indoor Tubelights, Low light (Click images to enlarge)
The real difference though is visible in indoor conditions. Under tubelights, the Yutopia desaturates images by a bit, while the Qiku Q Terra brings out the brightest image. In terms of details though, both the Yutopia and Q Terra are almost equivalent and better than the Honor 7. Speaking from a strict comparative point of view, the Q Terra would be the pick of the lot, but for regular usage, there are few who would find these three to be different, unless they put images side by side and look very closely. On the other hand, the Qiku Q Terra tends to bring a wam hue to images clicked under white lights in the studio, which many may not like.
Qiku Q Terra Camera Samples (L-R) Outdoor normal light, Studio White Lights, Indoor Tubelights, Low Light (Click images to enlarge)
Honor 7 Camera Samples (L-R) Outdoor normal light, Studio White Lights, Indoor Tubelights, Low light (Click images to enlarge)
The difference between the three cameras are most apparent under low light. While all three phones take more time to focus, the Honor 7 ends up corrupting the colours in the images. The Yutopia and Qiku Q Terra both do better, while the Q Terra again edges out the Yutopia by a slight margin.
Performance
If you’ve read the Yu Yutopia review, you would know that the software on this phone is not very well optimised. As a result, the Snapdragon 808 on the Qiku Q Terra performs almost as well as the Yutopia. In fact, even the Kirin 935 SoC on the Honor 7 is quite competitive. It’s evident that the software on the Q Terra and Honor 7 are much better optimised, which give them a huge edge over the Yutopia. Playing games on the phones, the Honor 7 and Q Terra are less susceptible to bugs and even lags sometimes.
It is worth noting though that the differences are apparent only during gaming and such activities. If you’re a more basic user, barring the bugs on the Yutopia, you won’t find much differentiating these devices. And that is where the price factor comes in.
Bottomline
It’s evident that you’re not making a big compromise if you buy the Qiku Q Terra and the Honor 7. That said, the Q Terra is the better of the two devices, while the Honor 7 promises better after sales support compared to both its competitors here. The compromise though is the biggest (using the word loosely) on the Honor 7 as well.
To explain, the Honor 7 doesn’t even qualify for the Car Chase benchmark on GFXBench, meaning that there’s a good chance that the phone doesn’t support new APIs from the Android Extension Pack. In terms of graphics performance, the phone does about a third of what the Qiku Q Terra and the Yu Yutopia can do. The Honor 7’s performance is good for most users, but if you do care about raw power, this isn’t the phone for you.
On the other hand, the difference between Qiku Q Terra and the Yu Yutopia are less apparent, despite the different SoCs and GPUs. To clarify, while the Yutopia does 10fps on GFXBench Manhattan 3.1, the Q Terra does 9.8fps, which is a compromise easily justified by its price. The same also translates to real world performance.
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Prasid Banerjee
Trying to explain technology to my parents. Failing miserably. View Full Profile
