We are now in a time where all the smartphone brands were pushing flagships with the best hardware and specifications. And at the same time, we also have brands like Coolpad which are still providing budget smartphones with decent looks and hardware. Coolpad recently released the CoolPad Note 5 Lite which looks almost similar to Coolpad Note 5; only the display is 5 inches in the lite version. There is much more on this smartphone, let’s see if it is fit for you and if you should buy it.
Design and Display
As I said before, this smartphone looks exactly like the Coolpad Note 5 only smaller, but if you look closer, then you’ll get a glimpse of Redmi Note 4 design. The front of the phone is all glass with touch reactive navigation buttons below the display. On the left side is the volume rocker and on the right are the power button and SIM card tray. The phone comes in only one color variant which is space gray and looks good.
The Back of the phone is all metal with shiny antennae bands on top and the bottom portion of the phone. The camera is centered with LED flash on the side and below the camera is the circular fingerprint sensor. At the lower portion is the loudspeaker with a small bump to keep the phone elevated a little while on the desk. The bottom edge of the phone go the micro USB port for charging alongside the primary microphone, and the top edge got the 3.5 mm headphone jack.
The display is not bright enough as it should be, I have to max the brightness whenever I use the smartphone outdoors. The touch reactivity of the display is also not the best; I experienced lots of accidental touches happening around the user interface while using it. The colors also get inverted as we turn the display at and angle.
Overall the design is good and feels great in hands because of the size of it, but only the display is keeping it a step back from other good looking budget smartphones. The box of the phone holds black color data cable and charger with some documentation and SIM card ejection tool, also the smartphone of course.
Coolpad Note 5 Lite Specifications
The Coolpad Note 5 Lite comes with a 5 inches HD capacitive touch screen. The primary camera is 13MP with LED flash and front got the 8 MP camera which also comes with a LED flash. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box layered with Cool UI 8.0 with more features. Powered by a 1 GHz MediaTek quad-core processor and 3 GB RAM and 16 GB internal memory. The battery is 2500 mAh which is quite enough for hardware like this.
Software and Features
Coolpad Note 5 Lite comes with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow which is layered with Coolpad’s Cool UI 8.0 which kind of look like iOS for some reason. The whole UI is straightforward and fluid; there is no app drawer or app list, all the apps are on the home screen. The notification bar only shows notifications with notification control and settings button on top.
All the quick toggles are located in a control menu which can be accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. You can customize this control panel to some extent, and it also holds the brightness adjust bar. Pull down anywhere on the home screen to access the local search bar which searches the apps installed for you.
There are more features in the Cool UI like smart control, C-Button, pocket mode, three finger screenshot and much more which you can use to play around the interface. Overall, I am satisfied with the user interface, and it’s very fluid, no lag there
Camera
We do not expect much from a budget smartphone’s camera because the price comes in the way of providing a high-end camera sensor. I was also not expecting much from this camera but turns out I was wrong, you can get some good selfies from this camera, and the flash adds a bit more clarity to the pictures.
Although the pictures were not good when captured indoors even with the flash but with good light conditions, images are detailed as it should be from a budget smartphone. I won’t say that the camera is bad or mediocre, but in this price range, I found this camera best and with a good camera app.
Performance and battery
I am not going to play with numbers here because it comes with a 1 GHz quad-core processor and 3 GB RAM at such a low price. Coolpad used the MediaTek processor to cut out some price from the price tag. There are some budget smartphones out there providing some more advanced hardware for a little bit higher price. This is the only point where this smartphone let me down because playing some basic games.
The battery is good and can easily give you two days of battery backup if you are not much of a gamer or stream lots of videos on YouTube. It also gets charged very quickly in spite of the fact that the battery is 2550 mAh. Overall I am pretty much satisfied with the battery backup this phone is providing to a base user.
Pros
- Sturdy build
- Good camera
- Good battery backup
Cons
- Poor display and touch reaction
- Performance is not as it should be!
Verdict
Coolpad Note 5 Lite is for a person who needs a 4G LTE smartphone with all the essential features in a smartphone within a budget price range. For Rs. 8,199 and available to buy on Amazon, Coolpad Note 5 Lite is providing with the best of the features which you can ever think of in a budget smartphone, including a fingerprint sensor. This phone is not for one looking for a smartphone with best performance and display; you have to look further for that.
