Coolpad has been quite successful with its range of Note 3 series which were appreciated by Indian consumers for its very efficient fingerprint reader in budget price and overall performance. These phones were of plastic body and Coolpad switched gear for its affordable phone and came out with metal bodied phone Mega 2.5D. Coolpad has taken its success story to another height and has launched recently Coolpad Note 5 which is beauty with brain. Priced at Rs. 10999, this phone is value for money and offer plethora of advantages to the budget buyers. How? Read below our review of this phone.
Nowadays the device you hold in hand most of the time when you are active, should look attractive and nobody likes to carry with him or her a shabby looking plastic phone. In this aspect, Coolpad Note 5 has all the trappings of an elegant phone with unibody metal body with 2.5D curved glass on the front.
I am over impressed with the quality of refined metal used for the construction of this phone which also has a metallic rim around the body and curved edges on both sides to give it an aesthetic look. The power button and Dual SIM tray slot is given on the right side and single volume rocker has been placed on the left side of the phone. The headphone jack is placed on the top and microUSB charging port is given at the bottom edge.
The front of the phone has 5.5 inch Full HD laminated display with scratch resistant glass cover and the navigation keys have been below the display to give more screen real estate for enjoying your media content. The 8MP front facing camera with LED flash has been given on the top of the front of the phone.
Their is rear 13MP camera with Dual LED flash in the center on the top of the back cover and above it is Antena band. The rear camera is little bit protruding but our usage of the phone for almsot 15 days proved that chances of scratches are very less as I have used Galaxy S6 camera which is more protruding but never got any scratch for my usage of it for more than a year. Behind the rear camera, you will find circular fingerprint reader of same size as of camera. Coolpad branding and speaker grille is given at the bottom of the back panel.
Despite the fact that this is 5.5 inch display phone yet it has strong grip and comfortable to hold. The metal is quite refined and hence rest assured it will not slip from your hand.
The display of this phone has Full HD 5.5 inch size with resolution of 1920 x 1080(401ppi) with 78% (screen-to-body ratio). The display has good viewing angles and reproduces accurate and bright colors. What I liked the most is that the visibility in the sun is also good unlike other phones of this genre and of price range. You will enjoy watching streamed media and YouTube videos on this display. It also reproduces crisp text on the screen and ideal for accessing the websites.
What is a phone without a good camera for clicking good shots and selfies. Coolpad has been providing reasonably good camera on its smartphones and this legacy is taken one step ahead in the Note 5. The Note 5 comes mounted with 13 MP primary camera with 5P Lens and f/2.2 aperture. It comes with various modes such as Panorama, Long Exposure, Night, Beauty, Pro and HDR. We have captured few images with this camera and the results are reasonably good with sufficient detailing, contrast and depth. For selfie crazy audience, its 8MP front shooter with LED flash is good enough to capture good selfies for posting on social media platforms. You can also shoot good videos in 1080p, 720p and 480p resolutions. One should not forget the facts that you are playing with a phone which is priced Rs. 11,000 only and it fully justifies the photoraphic experience you will have on this phone. Do not expect superlative camera performance on this phone. Some of the images captured on this phone in daylight are appended below, which speak for themselves. I would like to point out that while inserting these images in this article, we have to compress them and hence the quality gets deteriorated a bit:
One of the major highlights of the Note 5 is its massive 4010mAh battery. After charging full, I have tested the life of battery with moderate usage comprising of frequent logins to my social media platforms, checking of mails, browsing of news channels, watching videos for approximately 40 minutes every day and playing few games for 30 minutes. Can you imagine how the batttery performed? It worked for full day from 8AM to 9PM and lasted for another two hours next day and only then the charging was required. No need to carry with you power bank if you are owner of this phone. This phone has conventional micro USB charging port and not USB Type-C but considering its price, this is not a handicap as you have to charge once and forget for one and almost half day more. Not a bad proposition. Full marks to the Note 5 for its battery capabilites.
On the performance front, the Note 5 has very impressive hardware to provide you very good experience without any hiccups. This phone is powered by 1.5GHz. Snapdragon 617 Octa-core processor with Adreno 405. It comes with 4GB RAM and 32 GB of internal storage which is expandable to 64GB via microSD card. This is hybrid Dual SIM phone and you can use either two SIMs or one SIM and one slot for microSD card for extension of internal stoarge. Despite the fact that Snapdragon 617 is old chipset still the Coolpad has optimised it very well with its hardware and software to give overall smooth performance. On top of it, this phone is packed with 4GB RAM which is more than enough and multitasking can be done like a breeze. Switching between the apps and playing games is an amazing experience. The phone does not heat up easily. It gets heated up a little bit when you play heavy graphics games for too long and that too to a tolerable limit.
The other plus point of this phone is its fingerprint scanner on the back panel which will mesmerize you with its fast response time of less than 0.5 second time to unlock the phone and besides this, you can also click photos with it. This phone also comes with Dual App to enable you to set-up two Whatsapp and facebook accounts for your personal and official work.
On the connectivity front, this phone has options of 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 etc. It adapts to 4G networks quite well and quality of outgoing and incoming calls are clear.
This phone runs on Android Marshmallow OS with Cool UI 8.0 on top. Although I am not fan of UI of Chinese phones yet the heavily customization is easy to operate and some of the apps which come pre-installed such as Zuimei Weather and WPS Office etc. are of no use and can’t be uninstalled.
Conclusion
The Coolpad Note 5 has some cool features such as its powerful battery, very effficient fingerprint scanner, good display and acceptable camera. This phone is well designed and although its weight is 173 grams yet it does not look bulky and can be easily handled with single hand. Its peformance is upto the mark and my only reservation about this phone is its heavy customisation but that is a matter of choice for an individual. I can recommend this phone if you want to spend Rs. 11,000.
