This time, the Chinese company named Coolpad has launched its new smartphone named Note 3 In India. You may have been familiar with Coolpad’s budget devices. We recently got our hands on the Coolpad Note 3 to play around. People are completely confused with the name ‘Coolpad Dazen Note 3’ as the phone is having ‘Dazen’ in its name which looks exactly same as this one but to tell you the truth both the companies are totally different. Dazen is actually a Chinese variation of Coolpad. Read our Coolpad Note 3 Review below.
Coolpad Note 3 Review – A Perfect Value for Money Phablet
In The Box
- Coolpad Note 3 with non-removable battery
- MicroUSB Cable
- Wired Headset
- Travel Adaptor
Design and Hardware
The Coolpad Note 3 appears to be fine down to its looks. It is pleasantly rounded and made curved on the edges with a chrome-like frame. The display bezels are thin. The smartphone is quite easy to hold in one hand despite having a 5.5-inch display but one hand operation seems a bit difficult. The phone isn’t too heavy, it weighs 155 g and 9.3 mm thick.
The front has NEG glass giving protection against scratches but prone to fingerprints. It also has a 5 MP front camera, proximity sensor and a notification light.
The touch navigation buttons below the screen are used from Android Lollipop that does not light up.
At the back, there is a soft-touch removable Matt cover however the battery is fitted inbuilt and cannot be removed. It features a 13.1 MP rear camera with single LED flash and a fingerprint sensor right below the camera. There are two microphones, one below and one on the back beside the camera.
You will find two micro SIM card slots and one memory expandable slot after popping off the rear cover. The phone supports 4G LTE network.
The speakers at the backside below the Coolpad branding sound average and when kept on a surface the volume slightly decreases.
Volume control is on the left made from a single button and a power button on the right.
On the top, there is nothing but a 3.5 mm audio jack while the bottom has a MicroUSB port and a microphone.
Coolpad Note 3 Specifications:
- Display: 5.5-inch HD IPS display, 1280×720 resolution
- Software: Android Lollipop 5.1 with Cool UI 6.0
- Processor: 1.3 GHz octa-core processor, MediaTek MT6753 SoC
- Graphics: Mali-T720
- Memory: 3 GB RAM
- Rear Camera: 13.1 MP
- Front Camera: 5 MP
- Storage: 16 GB inbuilt storage with MicroSD expandable option up to 64 GB
- Fingerprint Scanner: Yes, on the back
- Network: 4G LTE Support
- Battery: 3000 mAh non-removable
- Dimensions: 151 m x 77 mm x 9.3 mm
- Weight: 155 g
Display
The Coolpad Note 3 has a large 5.5-inch IPS panel display supporting 1280×720 HD resolution that is enough for a budget smartphone. It is covered with strong NEG glass with high-intensity scratch resistant protection. You will see some fingerprints after using it for a while.
With 5.5 inches HD display, the colors look vivid on the screen and using the IPS display technology, viewing angle are great can be seen from a wider angle range and even watching from the sides the photos and videos look just fine.
The screen is highly reflective. Under direct sunlight, you may not be able to read the text and see images clearly.
Performance
On the performance side, it is powered by MediaTek MT6753 1.3 GHz octa-core processor and Mali-T720 graphics. The octa-core performance isn’t bad, the smartphone boots up in 28 Seconds. The device can run all cores simultaneously when you multi-task. It scored 35354 points on the AnTuTu benchmark which shows that it is as good as LG G3. The performance is almost lag free and good for day-to-day use.
As good as LG G3
The phone heats up at the camera side and the front NEG glass when ran a few games and heavy apps. The 3 GB RAM is more than enough and we were surprised that the system only took 607 MB of RAM after a reboot, the remaining 1.9 GB was free to anything you use it for.
The fingerprint sensor is fast enough to unlock the phone from sleep. It is accurate and with just less than a second, you can see the homescreen on the phone.
Software and UI
The smartphone runs Android Lollipop 5.1 with Cool UI 6.0 by Coolpad. We liked the flexibility of the UI. The UI is pretty much decent and surely felt lighter when using the phone.
The Coolpad skin gives you some interesting features like themes, font style, and lock screen style in its built-in app called CoolShow as well as some gestures like double tapping or swipe up the screen to unlock the phone and swipe down opens up camera. You can use gestures to draw M for music, C for phone keypad, O for Facebook and W for WhatsApp on the screen without unlocking.
The keyboard may not feel comfortable to use in landscape mode due to its large display and you may have to extend your thumbs very often however the portrait mode will give you ample space to type with ease.
With its octa-core processor and 3 GB RAM, you can run multiple apps at the same time by a feature called ‘Multitask’, a similar trait seen in the Samsung Galaxy Note series. It can be activated by swiping from the top and tapping the multitask button. You can resize the window and keep maximum 2 apps at a time.
Check out the 8 cool things you can do with Coolpad Note 3.
Camera
The Coolpad Note 3 comes with a 13.1 MP main camera f2.0 aperture with an LED flash and a 5 MP front camera. The camera specs sound too mainstream and quite okay for the price but let’s check how the camera performs.
The 13.1 MP Camera
The Day Shot
The camera quality seems to be good at a point and we are pleased with its camera performance in daylight conditions. The pictures taken in the daytime had a slightly warm effect but bright in colors. It supports 4x digital zoom.
The Night Shot
Without Flash
With Flash
You can see the details are washed out and smoothen in low lights out due to noise reduction. The situation is not that good when there is poor lighting. The shots in the dark were average quality and areas covered with the shadows were lost. The performance of the camera is good for the money but surely not the best in its class.
The camera app has few color effects and HDR. It also has a Pro mode that lets you use optional features like white balance, exposure, ISO using an interface. The video can be recorded up to 1920×1080 resolution at max.
The Front 5 MP Camera
The front 5 MP camera takes decent shots, the camera software is smart enough to apply some effects and retouches the photo you have taken but does a good job here. You can also take selfies with just a touch of your finger on the fingerprint sensor to make it more comfortable and convenient for you than the usual camera button.
Storage and Connectivity
The phone comes with a regular MicroUSB port, not with the newest USB Type-C, but it does not matter as the new USB standard isn’t much popular enough. When connected to the PC, it asks for a few options on how to connect the phone.
It comes with 16 GB of inbuilt storage and can be expanded with a MicroSD up to 64 GB. Although having a 16 GB storage, you will only get 10.9 GB free. You can insert a MicroSD by gently opening the back cover.
It supports GPS, Bluetooth version 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/ g/ n. There is no NFC, infrared and Wi-Fi Direct. It comes with a stereo earpiece which has an amazing sound quality. You will love to hear music with it’s bundled earphones.
Battery Life
The Coolpad Note 3 packs a massive 3000mAh battery. The battery performance is extremely good. The device can last almost a day easily with normal usage. We found out that the battery standby time is excellent. It took 5 days, 4 hours and 37 minutes to drain almost 50% of the battery. The screen-on-time was 2% when using pre-loaded apps for about 1 hour on auto-brightness, but heavy apps may take some extra battery. The overall battery performance definitely won’t disappoint you in any way.
The phone can be charged in two ways, ‘Efficient (recommended)’ for fast charging and other ‘Common’ for normal charging to extend the battery life cycle. It comes with a 0.2 A 5V travel charger and due to the huge 3000 mAh battery, it takes a while to charge. The phone charged from 30% to 48% in 30 minutes in fast charging mode, however, similar results were found in common mode. The phone charged only 5% in 10 minutes. You can expect to charge the phone fully in 3 to 3.5 hours.
Pricing and Variants
The CoolPad Note 3 is available for a price ₹8,999 exclusively on Amazon online store. There is only one color variant: ‘White’ available to purchase.
Update: On 10th December 2015, a black color variant launched in India with the same price tag.
Verdict
It is clear that the company is targeting its smartphones in the budget segment in India and it seems like this is the 1st smartphone to feature a fingerprint sensor in ₹10,000 budget. The smartphone can take up everything on a daily task and is useful if you want a phone that keeps up the battery for longer time. At just Rs. ₹8,999, it is definitely recommended for those who has a tight budget of ₹10,000 and want features like a fingerprint sensor, longer battery, decent camera, large screen, and good performance.
Pros
- Great battery life
- 3 GB RAM
- Fingerprint sensor
- Good camera
- 4G LTE and dual-SIM support
- Excellent value for money
- Decent earphones
Cons
- Heats up
- No backlit touch buttons
- Average phone speakers
Also, check out our Coolpad Note 3 Lite Review
