HSL Yuva Y501 plus review

The HSL Yuva 501 plus is a Spreadtrum quad core powered handset that sport a 5 inch screen, comes with dual SIM slot with 3G support and is also packed with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. This handset is priced at ₹4,444.

Unboxing
Inside the box you will find the 501+ handset, screen guard, user manual, warranty card, 2000 mAh battery, earphone, data cable, travel charger (5V ~0.8A) and cheap quality flip cover.

Design
I got the golden and black colour handset for the review. On the first look the build quality and the finishing was not at all impressive, it looked cheap. Weight with battery is 144 grams and dimensions are 73.13 x 145.39 x 9.08 (mm). Body is made of plastic and comfortable to hold.

Power button and volume rocker is on the right side. Audio jack and micro USB port is on the top. There is a single microphone at the bottom.

This is a dual SIM handset – SIM slot 1 is a normal SIM that supports 3G and SIM 2 is a micro SIM slot with 2G support only. There is micro SD card slot too.

There is no LED notification and handset is loaded with following sensors – accelerometer and proximity. There is no light sensor though there is an auto brightness option in brightness settings, however that does not really changes the brightness depending on the surrounding light condition.

Display
The HSL Y501 Plus sports a 5 inch screen (IPS) supporting 854 x 480 pixels (FWVGA) resolution. Colour reproduction, viewing angles and touch response are okay.

Memory, Storage and OS
501 plus comes loaded with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. On the first boot you will get 671MB free RAM and about 5GB free internal storage space. Not sure if OTG us supported or not cause you need a longer micro USB pin to get it into micro USB port (check video review). Apps are getting installed on the external storage.

Performance
This handset is powered by Spreadtrum SP7731 32 bit 1.3GHz quad core processor coupled with Mali 400 MP GPU. Performance is smooth, heat up is normal and surprisingly the game play was also very smooth.

Benchmark
Quadrant – 3431
Antutu (32 bit) – 1st time 17819, 2nd time 18041
Nenamark 2 – 62.5fps
Internal storage Speed – Read (59 MB/s), Write (22MB/s)
Multi Touch – 2 Point.

Gaming
Asphalt 8 got installed on external storage and the game play was very smooth in high visual quality mode.

Camera
There is 5MP AF camera on the rear with LED flash support and a 2MP camera on the front. Rear camera can shoot FHD videos. Camera quality is below average. Check the sample images and videos at the end of this review.

Others
Sound is loud and clear. In-call sound was also good. I did not face any network issues. 3G, 2G, WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth worked well. It took around 25 seconds to get the first GPS lock.

Battery
Y501+ comes with a 2000 mAh removable battery. Backup is pretty good you can expect about 4 to 6 hours of continuous moderate to heavy usage. I got 1 day 3 hours of backup with mixed usage.

Battery Performance (ignore battery temp)

  • Ran Benchmark for 13 minutes battery % dropped by 2 and battery temp was 20 degrees.
  • Played Asphalt 8 for 15 minutes battery dropped by 6% and temp was 20 degrees.
  • Watched FHD video with full brightness (WiFi on) for 16 minutes battery dropped by 4% and temp was 20 degrees.
  • Handset charging (wall charge) it took 3 hours to charge from 15% to 100%.

Verdict
The HSL Yuva Y501+ performance wise is good, however design wise it is not that great. Moreover it is running outdated Android KitKat and supports 3G. Camera quality is also not up to the mark. Now for the price of ₹4,444 there are better options available in the market.

HSL 501+ is priced at ₹4,444.

Image Gallery

Rear Camera Sample

Front Camera Sample

Video Review