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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Review: Coolpad Note 3 Lite
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Review: Coolpad Note 3 Lite

Coolpad's new smartphone offers more RAM than other smartphones in the same price range

Photographs: Ramesh Pathania/MintPremium
Photographs: Ramesh Pathania/Mint

Having a slightly stripped-down version of a flagship smartphone is quite common in the expensive smartphone category. But that trend is now trickling down to the budget segment too. Chinese phone maker Coolpad has come up with a mini version of its recently launched budget smartphone Coolpad Note 3 ( 8,999). Note 3 Lite ( 6,999) has the looks and features that made its elder sibling a rather interesting phone to consider. But is the Note 3 Lite good enough to be considered over established names such as the Xiaomi Redmi 2 Prime, which comes for the same price.

Design: compact and handy

The Note 3 Lite has the same pebble design as its bigger sibling. However, it feels much better in the hand due to its compact form factor and the soft matte texture on the back panel. Despite the plastic body, the phone feels solid and well-built. There is a fingerprint sensor on the back panel that is more accurate and scans faster than the fingerprint sensors in many expensive smartphones. And it happens to be the most affordable device to come with this feature.

At 142g and 8.9mm thickness, it is not very heavy either. The Xiaomi Redmi 2 Prime also measures 8.9mm but is slightly lighter (133g). However, it offers a 4.7-inch display while the Note 3 Lite has a 5-inch display.

Display: sharp, but a bit washed out

The Note 3 Lite’s 5-inch IPS (in-plane switching) display has a screen resolution of 1,280x720p, which is on a par with what one expects at this price. The wide viewing angles are good but the reflective nature of the screen makes it difficult to read in bright light. While the screen looks sharp enough for watching movies, social networking and reading, the colours looked a little washed out. The Redmi 2 Prime comes with a sharper but smaller (4.7-inch) display. It’s not very great in bright light but reproduces colours better.

Software: a new flavour of Android

The Note 3 Lite runs Android 5.1 (Lollipop) with a heavily customized user interface. There is no app drawer—the apps are arranged on the home screen itself. The icons look different too: They are square shaped like the MIUI in the Redmi 2 Prime. What gives the Coolpad phone an upper hand is that the Redmi 2 Prime still runs on Android 4.4 (Kitkat) OS. The interface, as is the case with a lot of Chinese phones, may be a bit intimidating and difficult to use at times, but the customization options will allow users to personalize it better.

Performance: can handle all games and apps with ease

The phone runs on the MediaTek MT6735 quad-core processor with 3 GB of RAM, which is a first at this price point. Most smartphones under 10,000, including the Redmi 2 Prime, have 2 GB RAM at the most. Though it is a modest processor, it is a 64-bit processor which allows for full utilization of the RAM, giving it enough leeway to handle the resource-intensive UI (user interface) and multitasking without any hiccups. It even played games such as FIFA 16 and SmashIt well. We have seen many mid-range smartphones struggle with them. The Note 3 Lite supports 4G networks and offers 16 GB storage, which is expandable to another 64 GB via a microSD card. The Redmi 2 Prime is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor which works well as long as you don’t push it too much. This phone is good with minor games but struggles with heavy games.

The Note 3 Lite’s 2,500 mAh battery provides over a day’s backup when used as a primary device. This is better than the Redmi 2 Prime, which comes with a 2,200 mAh battery and barely managed a day’s backup.

Camera: tends to oversaturate colours

The 13-megapixel camera is good when it comes to detail reproduction but tends to oversaturate colours for effect. This gives white colours a slightly yellowish tint, while yellow looks orange-y. Low-light shots tend to be blurry and washed out. The Redmi 2 Prime handles colours better and is on a par with the Note 3 Lite when it comes to detail. Its low-light shots are average, but overall, it has a better camera than the Note 3 Lite.

Verdict

The new Coolpad smartphone is an impressive addition to the budget segment. It may not topple the likes of Redmi 2 Prime off their perch but certainly offers a few better features and performance, such as the ability to handle graphic-intensive games, an accurate fingerprint sensor, and good display.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhijit Ahaskar
Abhijit writes on tech policy, gaming, security, AI, robotics, electronics and startups. He has been in the media industry for over 12 years.
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Published: 26 Jan 2016, 06:50 PM IST
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