The Coolpad Note 3 is a 64 bit octa core powered smartphone that sports a 5.5 inch screen with 720p resolution. It is running Lollipop with 3GB RAM and 16GB storage. This dual SIM handset is priced at ₹8,999 and the key highlight is a touch ID based finger print scanner.
Unboxing
Inside the box you will find the Note 3 smartphone, travel charger (5V ~ 2A), data cable, user guide, warranty card and standard quality earphone. SAR Value: 0.249 W/kg @ 1g head and 0.425 W/kg @ 1g body.
Design
Coolpad Note 3 looks great and gives a premium feel. The body is made of plastic, it is flat on the rear and curvy on the sides. There are no sharp edges. Rear side is white colour with a matte finishing. Overall build quality is very good.
Weight with battery is 172 grams and dimensions are 77.03 x 152.04 x 9.21 (mm). Power button is on the right side, volume rocker is on the left, audio jack on the top and micro USB port at the bottom. There are dual microphones for noise cancellation.
This is a dual SIM handset, there is a micro SIM slot 1, a micro SIM slot 2 and an overlapping micro SD card slot. You can use two SIM cards and a micro SD card simultaneously. 4G works on both the SIM slots.
There is LED notification, native video calling is not supported but there are some cool features added in the phone dialler like using the fingerprint to record a call / using fingerprint to answer the call.
The handset is loaded with following sensors – Accelerometer, light, proximity, gyro, magnetic and hall.
There are borders on the screen and they do look a little weird because the borders are slightly wider on the left and right side when compared with the top and bottom. And the reason is because, the front panel is also white colour. On a black coloured handset this would have easily gone un-noticed. Not a big issue though.
Display
This handset sports a 5.5 inch screen with 1280 x 720 pixels resolution. When I switched on the phone for the first time I saw a single live pixel (check video review). It is okay with me, also once the handset is on it is impossible to notice, unless there is some black background.
Colour reproduction, touch response and viewing angles are very good. The screen is scratch resistant (pin test) to a small extent. It is not mentioned if the screen comes with any protection.
Memory, Storage and OS
The Note 3 from Coolpad comes packed with a good 3GB RAM and 16GB storage. On the first boot you will get around 11GB free internal storage space and around 2.1GB free RAM. There is micro SD card slot, but apps are getting installed on internal storage for the first time, if applicable they can be moved later on to external storage. OTG works, I was able to connect OTG pendrive.
This smartphone is running Cool UI 6.0 (the UI is pretty cool) based on Android Lollipop 5.1 (64 Bit).
Performance
This smartphone is using the well known MediaTek MT6753 octa core processor (64 Bit) cortex A53 – clocked at 1.3GHz coupled with Mali T720 GPU. I did not find any issues with the performance, it was lag free and even gaming performance was pretty good. handset does not heat up much max battery temperature that I encountered was 39 degrees.
Benchmark
| Benchmark App | Score |
| Quadrant | 18281 |
| Antutu (64 bit) | 1st – 34574 , 2nd – 35160 |
| Nenamark 2 | 57.9fps |
| Internal Storage speed | Read – 162MB/s, Write – 79MB/s |
| Multi touch | 5 point |
Gaming
I was able to install the Asphalt 8, on the internal storage. By default it was set to medium visual quality mode, I switched to high graphics and the game was pretty smooth, playable and lag free. This handset can play many high end games.
Camera
There is a 13MP AF camera on the rear with LED flash and a 5MP camera on the front. The interface is different and there are not much options. There are 2 camera settings – full screen and standard screen(4:3). The quality was better in full screen mode.
Apart from photo, video there is the pro mode that gives manual control – for example you can change the ISO and also switch to manual focus mode to name a few.
There are different shooting modes available – Normal, beauty, HDR, dimlight, smile, panorama and gesture. In camera settings you will also find the detect scene option, you can enable or disable, better disable that when using the camera indoors, it may or may not work.
Camera quality I found was above average. There are some sample images and a 1080p video attached at the end of the review, do check those out.
For front camera there is mirror option, the sample shot below was with mirror off (default). You can also use the fingerprint sensor to shoot selfies.
Fingerprint scanner
This is the key feature considering the price tag. It is touch ID based scanner that is located on the rear side. Detection is very accurate and it works 360 degrees. You will need to register your finger prints and then you can use it to unlock the device. There is FP Lock app – you can assign apps that will open only via fingerprint security.
There are two ways you can unlock the smartphone using fingerprint scanner.
- Press power button once and then place the finger on the scanner.
- Directly place the finger on the scanner and wait for a second to auto screen on and unlock without having to use the power button.
It takes just about 1 second for the detection without using the power button. In fact you don’t really need to keep your finger on the scanner, just tap and remove the finger and it still works (check video review).
Others
Sound is loud and clear, no issues with in-call speaker. 4G, 3G, WiFi, GPS (instant lock) and Bluetooth worked really well without any issues. The body is plastic including the silver metal.
Battery
This handset comes with a 3000 mAh non-removable battery that does a pretty good job. You can expect 4 to 6 hours of continuous moderate to heavy usage. For my usage I got an easy one and a half day of mixed usage on a single charge.
| Performance | Time | Battery drop % | Battery Max Temp |
| Benchmark | 12 Minutes | 3% | 38 degree |
| Gaming (Asphalt 8) | 23 Minutes | 8% | 39 degree |
| FHD movie play with full brightness + Wi-Fi on | 41 minutes | 10% | 38 degree |
| Wall Charge (on standby) | 1 hour 26 minutes | 30% to 100% (wall charge) – from 0 to 100% estimated less than 2 hours 30 minutes. | 37 degree |
Verdict
The Coolpad Note 3 is another impressive handset and probably the only handset that is offering a fingerprint scanner for under ₹9K. Performance is good, there is a good 3GB RAM, camera quality is above average and battery backup is also pretty good. And add to it the finger print scanner that definitely is an added advantage.
Overall a very good option for ₹8,999.
The Coolpad Note 3 can be purchased from Amazon.
Image Gallery
Rear Camera Sample
Front Camera Sample
Video Review
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