Coolpad Note 3 Lite Review: India’s Superbly Affordable Wonder-Phone

China based smartphone manufacturer Coolpad is full of surprises for the Indian market – the company’s Coolpad Note 3 handset received a lot of accolades for being a great smartphone, offered at an equally great price point in India – in line with the company’s philosophy of delivering great value for money for its consumers – at INR 6999, Coolpad Note 3 Lite is an amazing handset.

This smartphone offers high-end specifications which promises to deliver exceptional performance at a pocket friendly price point. This is surely a wonder-phone for the Indian market today.

Design and Display

When it comes to design, Coolpad Note 3 Lite looks quite similar to the Coolpad Note 3 in terms of touch and feel. However, there is a bit of gold in this smartphone as it has a golden metal rim that give a stylish and premium look to this smartphone. Between the two smartphones - the major difference comes in the form of its size.

While reviewing this device, we found this device to be extremely comfortable in terms of holding it. Even though, it is a 5-inch device, it fits perfectly well in one hand. The front panel of the device houses a 5MP front-facing camera at the top with a set of sensors. The rear panel houses a 13MP rear camera with LED flash and a fingerprint sensor.

A user needs to remove the back panel to insert the 2 SIM and the microSD cards. This smartphone has a 2,500 mAh battery that cannot be ejected. This smartphone has 3.5mm headset jack and micro-USB port which are placed at the top and bottom edges of the device, respectively.

Coolpad Note 3 Lite smartphone comes with a 5-inch display with 720x1280 pixels resolution. It is quite evident and we experienced the same - that the display of the handset has better pixel density when compared to – the Coolpad Note 3. The display of this smartphone delivers quite vibrant colour along with good level of brightness.

The Coolpad Note 3 Lite smartphone runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop OS clubbed with the Cool UI of the company. This consists of a customised interface, which supports a number of interesting themes. This smartphone comes preloaded with a number of apps including Facebook, WeChat, WPS Office, SwiftKey, etc. Some of these preloaded apps were specifically designed for Coolpad including FP Lock, CoolShow, Rock Wallpaper, and Cool store. While reviewing the product, we found the user interface to be very smooth and working really well without any lags.

The Coolpad Note 3 Lite comes powered by a 1.3GHz 64-bit Mediatek MT6753 quad-core processor, most importantly in today’s scenario where a user has so many choices coming in from different directions of the market – this smartphone is the only one in this price tag to come with 3GB of RAM.

It also offers 16GB storage which is expandable up to 64GB via microSD card. This is a great buy in this category and with its unique price point and specification rich proposition – this smartphone is surely a great buy for entry to even mid range buyers.

When we reviewed the product, Coolpad Note 3 Lite performed very well and it lived up to its expectations. We did not face any heating issues while playing graphic intensive games such as Asphalt 8, Cars and others. When we used it, the non-removable 2,500 mAh battery lasted well beyond a day under moderate usage.

Camera Performance

Coolpad Note 3 Lite comes with a 13MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5MP front camera for selfies. When we used it for taking pictures, photographs taken during daylight came out well and carried good amount of detailing and colour reproduction as well. We also found the camera app to be quite user friendly and with a number of useful features, and modes for making photography a great experience.

Final Verdict

The Cooplad Note 3 Lite is a great phone that comes at a very interesting price range. This comes with a price tag of Rs 6,999 and offers high-end specifications such as quad-core CPU, 3GB RAM, HD display, 13MP rear camera and a fingerprint sensor. This is a great budget phone that is likely to create a lot of market disruption in India.