Coolpad Note 3 Lite 4G/LTE Dual SIM Fingerprint Sensor Budget Smartphone Review

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Coolpad Note 3 Lite is the latest offering of Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Coolpad, for entry level smartphone. As the name says it all, it is the lighter version of Coolpad Note 3. The Chinese company entered into Indian market few months ago and had gained attention for their specs at bargained prices.

Coolpad Note 3 Lite was made available by the company on 15th Jan as its candidate for the entry-level smartphone market. We have got this review unit from Coolpad couple of days ago so let’s take the device put and get started with it.

Design & Build

Starting with the design & build, it surely is made out of plastic but doesn’t look cheap at all. Looking around volume rockers at the left power key at the right, top features 3.5mm audio jack, Micro-USB 2.0 port, and microphone at the bottom.

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The 5MP front shooter, LED notification light, speaker, and proximity sensor located up here and capacitive navigation buttons are located towards the bottom of the screen.

The back of the phone features 13MP shooter along with LED flash and secondary noise cancellation mic right up here. Below the camera, this is the fingerprint sensor, yes a fingerprint sensor in budget category phone! Then there is Coolpad branding and speaker grill towards the bottom of the back.

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The back is removable, but the battery is not. You get access to SIM 1 & SIM 2 card slots and microSD card slot towards the bottom. The phone is pretty light and sleek, surrounded by gold color polished metal frame looks exquisite. Appealing for girls!

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The Back Shell has a rugged texture that helps in getting a sturdy grip on the phone even using single-handedly. Weighted at 146 grams, the phone is easy to carry, even in the hand or in pockets.

Display: 5-inch 720p IPS HD

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Starting with the display, Coolpad Note 3 Lite comes with a 5-inch 720p IPS HD display. The display of the device is just perfect, correct color reproduction, improved reading capabilities in outdoor condition makes the right use of adaptive brightness feature. Overall, the screen is lovely for an entry level phone.

Performance: MediaTek Quad-core 1.3 GHz Processor with 3GB RAM

The Coolpad Note 3 Lite seems to do what it made for. All thanks to MediaTek quad-core 1.3GHz processor that is coupled with three gigs of RAM. The combination ensures High Performance and low power consumption.

It has 16GB internal storage onboard and can be extended up to 64GB via microSD card. So you can store your favorite apps and heavy games without worrying.

Apps open up quickly, and multitasking went fairly well. There was rarely any instance when I felt any lag or intense heating issue even after prolonged usage.

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Particularly gaming was fun. Somehow I got addicted to a game, called Bad Land, and I kept on playing it for hours. Needless to say, it didn’t show any symptoms of heating or performance issues. Specs definitely make it competent enough.

I am most intrigued by fingerprint sensor installation from Coolpad. Let’s check it out!

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Setting it up is quick and quite easy, you can either use the Fingerprint app or set it up in Settings. Verify your fingerprint 5 times, set either PIN or pattern, and it is all set to amaze you with its performance.

Simply touching finger at the sensor brings you straight to the unlocked home screen. It worked 99% times accurately, and I didn’t see it falling behind in performance ever in my usage.

Camera: 13MP Rear & 5MP Front

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Now talking about the camera, the phone features 13MP rear camera with autofocus and LED flash. A 5 MP front shooter that is again, a bonus, considering its price segment!

The camera app is pretty simple and well designed. Pro mode gives you the power to modify settings like WB, ISO, focus, and brightness.

In bright sunlight, the camera performed awesomely! It managed to click impressive detailed and rich in colors images even in close-ups. Even in the low light LED flash enables you in getting decent pictures.

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You get few options such as face beauty, HDR mode, Dim light shot, smile shot, panorama, and gesture shot.

The HDR mode works well and does help in getting useful pics in tricky lighting conditions. The camera records video at 1080p resolution. And you can use the fingerprint sensor to click selfies.

The overall camera performed well and lived up to the expectations.

Camera Samples

Software: Android 5.1 Lollipop

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The phone comes with Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box with its own custom cool UI launcher. Not like other ugly skins, it looks clear and simple.

The phone comes with few preinstalled apps such as Facebook, WeChat, WhatsApp, Amazon shopping app, WPS Office, Xploree, Cool service, and the Cool store.

The Cool store is company’s app store; you can download few popular apps from here that are already installed. Well, that has no utility. Cool service gives you location on Google maps.

We have got few niftier additions for e.g. FP lock, it allows you to lock any of the listed apps, which means no more need of app locker apps.

Clear works as cache cleaner of your phone. Again quite useful.

Cool Show is app to pick up from thousands of themes, wallpapers, font styles and lock screen styles available in the app.

All three of capacitive touch buttons comes with standard functionality of Android phones.

A long press either on the home screen or recent apps drawer button brings the option to set widgets, change the wallpaper, and choose among several effects as how you want your screen to appear.

The phone doesn’t have gesture modes to wake up but with this excellent fingerprint sensor that is not needed.

Overall UI is pretty smooth, few jitters, but it managed to live up to expectations.

Battery: 2500 mAh

Battery performance is better than the competitors without any doubt!

The 2500 mAh non-removable battery kept the phone running for 7-8 hours on heavy usage that includes watching movies, music playback, attending phone calls with dual-SIM active, social networking, lots of browsing and gaming.

It took around 2 hours to get it charged from 0 to 100%. Battery performance is better than the competitors without any doubt!

Talking about audio quality, the sound was surprisingly rich and clear, but the positioning of the speaker at the back means you can’t leave the phone face up on a flat surface when playing music or watching videos.

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Connectivity front houses Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, and Dual-Sim 4G LTE support. However, 4G seems working for only one sim at a time. Other than that it has also on-boarded gravity, proximity, light, and a magnetic sensor.

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In-The-Box

  • Coolpad Note 3 Lite Phone Unit
  • Screenguard 
  • Literature Package
  • 2 Amp USB Wall Adapter
  • MicroUSB Cable
  • Earphones

The Verdict

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Now, the question is should you buy it or not? Well, Coolpad Note 3 Lite comes with 5-inch HD display, quad-core processor, 3GB RAM, 13MP camera, fingerprint sensor, bigger battery, and much more, but at what price?

Well it being said, “competition brings out the best!”, The Coolpad Note 3 Lite is priced just for Rs. 6,999 only.

And there is no question of buying it or not, you should buy it!

Coolpad Note 3 Lite Video Review

About the author

Nitin Agarwal

Nitin started PC-Tablet because of his keen interest in space research, technology, and gadgets. He is an avid reader, technology enthusiast, and like to explore new places. His passion for knowledge keeps him running all the time.

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