Coolpad back in June launched their first Smartphone under Dazen brand in India. Now both Dazen and coolpad are separate brands. Coolpad launched Note 3 smartphone few days ago, which is most affordable smartphone with Fingerprint scanner and 3GB RAM in India. Coolpad Note 3 is priced at Rs 8,999 available exclusively from Amazon.in through flash sale. Here is our review of Coolpad Note 3
Design & Display
Let’s talk about Design and Build quality of phone ,Note 3 is made up of plastic body with curve back and metal strip around the edges. Note 3 feature a 5.5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD IPS display with a NEG glass protection which is scratch proof. The display also has display bezels around the screen. The device has a wide visibility range with a viewing angle up to 178 degree. The Display is Not Full HD Display but 720P Display with a pixel Density of 268ppi, Display offers good viewing angles bright and vibrant colours. The looks bright in outdoor condition also.
On Front is has a 5MP front-facing camera earpiece at center and there are some other sensors Notification LED next to it. There are three capacitive touch buttons on the bezels below the display. The micro USB slot is present on the bottom and the 3.5mm audio jack is present on the top. The power button is present on the right side. Left side of the phone has the volume rockers. The phone has a 13MP rear camera with LED Flash. The fingerprint scanner is present below the camera lens. It has a plastic body with has a soft matte finish and has Coolpad branding at the lower back along with the loudspeaker grill. The phone measures 151×77×9.3mm and weighs 155g and can be used in one hand. Overall the build quality and design of note 3 is good and feels good.
Performance
Coolpad Note 3 is powered by a MediaTek MT6735 processor which is clocked at 1.3GHz with Mali-T720 GPU coupled with 3GB of RAM and 16 GB of On board storage which is further expandable up to 64GB with MicroSD card. The device supports OTG. Out of 16 GB around 10.43GB is available for use. Multitasking of app works fine without any lag bcoz of 3GB of RAM out of which almost 50 % is available for user while using sevral apps. We played some games like Asphalt 8, Real racing 3, Death Moto, Temple Run 2, after playing some high end games for more than 30min there was not a lag or frame drop while playing but devices gets heat up while playing some high end. While using other apps or playing normal games we didn’t notice any heating issue, Performance of device is up to mark at the price it is available . In our Benchmark test On AnTuTu benchmark, the phone scores 35550 points. On Quadrant Benchmark the phone score 19132 points, GFXBench benchmark, the phone scores 1043 points. And last In Geekbench3 benchmark the phone scores 2856 in Multi core and 621 on single core.
Software
Coming to OS Note 3 runs on
Android 5.1 with their own CoolUI top on it. It supports a whole lot of gestures to increase the convenience at the user end. . It also supports multiple drawing gestures to open desired app directly from the lock screen. lets talk about the software and fingerprint sensor in details the device runs the latest Android 5.1 with on CoolUI 6 on top of it. CoolUI has improved alot as comapre to which was available in Dazen 1. The UI works fine with No lag. there are several preloaded apps such as Facebook, Amazon, WhatsApp, WeChat, WPS Office, Xploree, Cool Service and Cool Store, Xploree.
Cool services apps gives details about the service centers available across india. The phone has a cool store where we can download apps such as Quickr, turbo cricket, and Wikipedia. now talking about notification panel there are some usefull shortcut such as C button which works as shortcut button when you enable it there will small C logo on Display click it to use shortcuts such as screenshot, power button, restart etc you can find it out in below pictures
There is also a multitasking option means can run two apps simultaneously. CoolUI brings some gestures such as wake-up gesture double tapping on screen to wake up display when screen off, Draw c to open keyboard, M to play music and more.
Fingerprint Scanner
Now lets talk about the unique feature that is available in Note 3 which is available in some high end devices. It comes with a fingerprint scanner which is located below the rear camera which is quite accurate and works fine, we can also use to capture photos,receive phone calls, record call using fingerprint scanner. Total 5 fingerprints can be used.There is another cool feature which is FP Lock which allows to choose fingerprint scanning option to apps which means no one other than you can open and use the app which is really interesting feature available on such a budget smartphone. Overall performance of fingerprint scanner works fine and helps user to maintain their security.
Camera
Coolpad Note 3 has a 13MP rear camera with LED Flash f/2.0 aperture and a 5MP front facing camera . The rear camera can record 1080P videos and front camera can record 720P videos.It has tap to focus, quick shutter speed and records video @ 30 frames per second. The images turned out to be quite good in broad daylight. camera app comes with some modes such as Face Beauty, HDR, Dimlight, Smleshot, panorama, Gesture shot. Pro mode allows to use optional features like white balance, exposure, ISO using an interfaceThe camera sample captured from rear camera are quite decent produces good colours in both day light as well Low light. front camera performance is average. Check out camera samples below
Connectivity & Battery
On connectivity it include 4G LTE / 3G HSPA+, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS. Two micro SIM cards and the microSD slot are present under the back cover. The device supports MicroSD card up to 64GB also supports OTG. Sepaker output is quite loud and clear when volume is full but when we decrease volume the sound output is quite low which is one of drawback. Coolpad Note 3 comes with earphone in box Overall sound quality on voice calls and speaker output is clear when volume is full.
Coolpad Note 3 packed by a 3000mAh battery which is Non-removable we easily got a full day of usage out of it. In Normal use and 12 hours of battery backup while playing games, using the web, watching movies etc. we got a screen-on time of 5 hours. Note 3 also supports fast charging mode which allows one to charge device from 0-100% in 3 hours 20min our review unit had 1Amp charger, According to some users it says retail unit comes with 2 Amp charger which allows 0-100% in 1 hour 20min .
Coolpad Note 3 is priced at Rs 8,999 comes with 3GB of RAM fingerprint scanner at Back and a 3000mAh battery. Build and design of smartphone is good at the price it is available. display is HD not a FHD this can be ignored provide decent viewing angles. sound quality of device is low as compared to other devices. Fingerprint sensor is fast and responsive. This could be one of the best sub 10k smartphone of the year. Some probs are Design and build quality, 3GB RAM , fingerprint scanner, Price at which it is available cons: Non removable battery, Low speaker output, No FHD Display