Reviewing Coolpad Note 3 Lite after a week

For the last one week we have been using the Coolpad Note 3 Lite regularly and we found it pretty good for the price. Recalling a brief description about its specifications – Coolpad Note 3 Lite is powered by a 64-bit 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6753 quad-core processor and ARM Mali T720 GPU coupled with 3GB RAM and 16GB on-board storage which is further expandable via a microSD card. The device is bundled with 2500mAh non-removable battery. We thought a week’s time is good to pass a judgement and hence, we have our 7 days experience in words below.

Design

Coolpad Note 3 Lite is a toned down sibling of the much larger Coolpad Note 3 which sports a similar design language, the plastic body build and the bezel-less look (it is not exactly bezel – less), although it is still quite an astonishing and clean design. With a champagne gold glossy finish on the edges, it gives the device an attractive look overall. The back of the phone has a soft matte texture to it which helps in maintaining better grip of the smartphone. One thing that I personally didn’t like about device is the placement of speaker grill at back as it is not an ideal place to put loud speakers. We always prefer them to be at the bottom edge or on the front. The loudness of the speaker is fine but when kept in pocket, a lot of it gets damped down.

Camera

The camera hardware on the Coolpad Note 3 Lite is not too impressive and it isn’t like there are no good cameras phones in this range. The primary camera is a 13-megapixel shooter with a 5P lens, CMOS sensor and f/2.0 aperture, whereas the secondary camera is a 5-megapixel shooter.
The camera UI on the Coolpad Note 3 Lite is neat and clean, yet offers certain features to help you take the perfect shot. The interface is quite easy to use, you have a photo, video, and professional mode on the home and by just swiping up and down it would switch between different modes. On switching to the Pro Mode, the screen shows circular dials much like we’ve already seen with Nokia smartphones. Image filters like Mono, Fresh, Calm, Memory and others are also included. The primary camera performance of the device is good for daylight photography, but when it comes to low light photography the camera lags behind a little. On the other hand colour reproduction of the images is pretty decent with almost perfect color saturation. The video recording allowed on the rear camera is up to 1080p resolution and surprisingly it was good, better than any other affordable handset in the same price range.

Software

The Coolpad Note 3 runs on rather Android Lollipop 5.1 with a layer of the company’s proprietary Cool UI 6.0. This custom build comes with a lot of security features embedded making the best use of available fingerprint reader. With MIUI like launcher less navigation, apps can be difficult to find especially when are used to third-party launchers like Nova, Aviate etc. Overall the user interface of operating system is quite decent but we think Coolpad should keep improving. As of now, we believe the user interface of the OS is not matured yet. Coolpad should build something which remains exclusive on CoolUI which might catch more audience if marketed properly.

Setting up the fingerprint scanner on this device is as easy as it can be, interestingly there is a pre-installed app called FP Lock that lets you lock specific apps using the fingerprint scanner. We are doing a separate video tutorial for the same which shall go live soon.

Performance

The Coolpad Note 3 Lite sets a baseline for what exactly a budget friendly smartphone should be like, with an ample 3GB DDR3 RAM and 16GB of internal storage. So by knowing about this memory specification that comes with this device it can be expected that it would have been powered by a processor that should be better than Snapdragon 410 (which is used by most manufacturers in this price segment). The device in turn packs a MediaTek MT6735 64-bit chipset which is considered to be competitor for Snapdragon 410 and in some case even considered a better performer than the Qualcomm Chipset, but this is not exactly the case. The phone handled daily tasks quite well, and it was on par with performance when compared with other devices in this range, but the chipset starts to sweat we started playing high graphical games like Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat 5: Blackout, though medium to low graphical games like Dead Trigger 2, Clash of Clans and Hill Climb Racing worked like a charm.

Talking about the benchmark, we did benchmarking tests using a variety of popular apps and wasn’t much surprised with the results. The Geekbench 3 benchmark scored a 609 on single-core and 1726 on multi-core test whereas quadrant scores 12445.

The fingerprint sensor used by manufacturer on this handset is FPC 1021, which is the high rated Fingerprint Card sensor for identifying fingerprints. The module has been used by many Chinese mobile giants with their flagship devices, so Coolpad using this on their affordable handset says it all.

Our Verdict about Coolpad Note 3 Lite

The latest smartphone from Coolpad does seem as it will win some hearts based on the specifications and features it offers for well under 10k, but having 3 GB of RAM does not guarantee that the device would perform well. Though top-notch multi-tasking capabilities that comes straight right with the device. We couldn’t have asked much better quality of design and materials used for the pricing it is available. The device once available for consumers will face direct competition from the Lenovo Vibe P1m, Intex Cloud Swift, and Lenovo A6000 Plus along with Xiaomi’s Redmi 2 Prime. It’s good to see that the Coolpad Note 3 Lite is able to fit in the shoes for its parent, the Coolpad Note 3.

PROS

• Excessive Amount of RAM
• Premium Build Quality
• Blazing fast Fingerprint Sensor
• Aggressive Pricing

CONS

• Average Camera Package
• Average Chipset Performance
• Coolpad’s Bloatware

Coolpad Note 3 Lite will be exclusively available on Amazon.in starting 28 January at 2PM. It will be available via a flash sales model alike the Coolpad Note 3.

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