Coolpad recently launched its new Cool 5 smartphone in India for Rs 7,999. The Coolpad Cool 5 is offered in Gradient Blue and Midnight Blue colours and is available for purchase in India through Amazon.in.
The handset is the successor of Cool 3 Plus smartphone, which was introduced earlier this year in the country. It comes with waterdrop notch, dual rear cameras, an octa-core chipset, and a big battery. But does this phone has all the traits to beat other popular budget smartphones like Redmi 8A and Infinix S5 which have been recently launched? Let’s find out here.
[[VIDEOID=1535]]
Design and Display
The Coolpad Cool 5 has a plastic glossy body with gradient design on the back which attracts a lot of fingerprints and smudges. For that, the company has provided a protective plastic case. We received the Gradient Blue variant for review, which has dark blue on top and violet on the bottom. At the back, there is a dual camera module with LED flash in middle on the top left corner. There is also circular fingerprint scanner in the centre with Coolpad branding in the bottom at the back.
The right side of the device features volume/power buttons while the left side has a hybrid SIM slot. The top EDGE of the phone houses a 3.5mm Headphone jack while on the bottom, there is Micro USB port in the centre with speaker grilles on both sides.
The design of the phone is quite common and it offers nothing new if we compare it with other smartphones in this price range. It is quite compact and easy to use it with a single hand, though some might find it a bit heavy in nature.
The Coolpad Cool 5 features a 6.22-inch HD+ TFT-IPS display with 19:9 aspect ratio, dewdrop notch and 1520 x 720 pixels resolution. The 19:9 screen features 2.5D curved glass on top. The screen also has a waterdrop notch up top which houses the 16MP selfie camera.
During our brief testing period, we found out that the display is quite decent and has good viewing angles. We also did not face any issue with outdoor visibility. However, we are yet to see how the display performs during our review period.
Hardware and Software
On the hardware front, the Coolpad Cool 5 is powered by a Mediatek Helio P22 octa-core Processor clocked at 2.0GHz and coupled with 4GB of RAM. The phone has 64GB storage onboard, which can be further expandable up to 128GB by adding a microSD card.
With this chipset, the phone delivers some good day-to-day performance, though one should not expect it to perform well in multitasking heavily. The phone is clearly not targeted for some heavy users. As for the competition is concerned, the phone will have a tough time competing with the likes of Redmi 8A, Vivo U10, and Realme 5.
Also, we found the fingerprint sensor to be quite fast in unlocking the device. The face unlock also works fine but we found it to be slow in low light conditions. We were not able to unlock the phone quickly in dark environment using this feature.
On the software front, the Coolpad Cool 5 comes pre-loaded with Android 9 Pie out of the box. We do get a bunch of pre-loaded apps (bloatware) like UC Browser, Opera Mini, Opera News. Thankfully, these apps are removable and can be removed as per users requirements. You also get App drawer support and the apps are aligned alphabetical order. We will talk more about this in our upcoming review.
Camera
On the camera front, the Coolpad Cool 5 features a dual-camera setup which consists of 13-megapixel primary sensor along with a 2-megapixel depth sensor with an LED flash on the front and 16-megapixel shooter on the front for selfies and video calling. The camera interface includes bokeh mode, time-lapse, portrait mode, face cute and 6 level beauty mode.
The rear camera performance seems to be pretty decent in the daylight conditions. The selfie camera also did a decent job in daylight. But the phone struggles in low light conditions as the images came out to be quite grainy. Wait for any sort of judgment until we are out with a detailed review of this phone.
Battery and Connectivity
Coolpad Cool 5 is fuelled by a 4000mAh battery with fast charging. Coolpad says the battery will be able to provide a Talktime of 18 hours and Standby time of 200 hours on a single charge. The battery should ideally last one full day under normal usage. However, we are yet to test out the overall performance of the battery.
In terms of connectivity, the Coolpad Cool 5 features Type-C port, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, FM Radio, 3.5mm headphone jack, and more. The phone weighs 145 grams and measures 15.7 x 0.8 x 7.6 cm.