Coolpad launched the Dazen 1 smartphone in India back in May, which got a price cut to Rs. 5999 last month. It is currently one of the cheapest Android smartphones with 4G support in the country, which competes with other budget 4G handsets. Is this the best budget 4G smartphone? Let us find out in the review.
Unboxing
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1DQSHm4Tec
Box Contents
- Coolpad Dazen 1 smartphone in Baby snow white color
- 2-pin charger (5V-1A)
- Micro USB cable
- 2500mAh battery
- User guide and warranty card
Display, Hardware and Design
The 5-inch HD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at 294 ppi is bright, offers vibrant colors and good viewing angles, since it has 178-degree wide-viewing angle. The sunlight legibility is good, but the display is glossy. It also has a glove mode that increases the touch sensitivity, so that you can use the phone even when you are wearing the gloves. Overall the display is pretty good for the price. The smartphone is 141mm tall and 71.5mm wide, which is decent for a smartphone with a 5-inch display.
The earpiece is present on the top edge. It has a 5-megapixel camera, which is good for selfies and video chats. It can record videos at 720p HD resolution. It has the usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors next to the camera and also has a LED notification light.
It has usual set of capacitive touch buttons below the display. These are backlit and offer haptic feedback when pressed.
The smartphone is 9.3mm thick. The back cover with smooth matte finish extends to the side of the smartphone, which makes it slippery. The power button is present on the right side and the volume rockers are present on the left side. The micro USB slot is present on the bottom, while the 3.5mm audio jack is present on the top.
We have the Snow White colored variant of the smartphone. It also comes in Moon Dust Grey color. The White back cover gets dirty easily and the matte finish is also prone to smudges. There is a 8-megapixel camera on the top along with a LED flash and a secondary microphone. There is a loudspeaker grill on the bottom part of the back. There are dazen and Coolpad branding on the back. Even though the smartphone has plastic build, the quality is good. It weighs 155 grams.
Opening the back cover reveals a 2500mAh removable battery. There are two micro SIM slots. Only the first slot supports 4G. The label mentioned on the top is actually wrong, the first slot is SIM 1 and the second one is SIM 2. It also has a microSD expansion slot that accepts cards up to 32GB.
Camera
Coming to the camera quality, the 8MP shooter takes decent shots. Daylight images are dull and washed out most of the times, but the details are good. It doesn’t focus properly while capturing macro shots, which should be fixed. HDR shots are decent, but again these were washed out in most cases. Low-light images had minimal noise, but the NightShot mode makes images brighter and images with flash is also good.
It has several camera modes (Normal, Beauty, NightShot, Sound & Shot, GIF, Picture zoom, HDR, PIP, No backdrop, Face preferred, Picture focus and Capture Smiles), Filters (Standard, Monochrome, Negative, Solarize, Sepia and Posterize), Auto Scene detection and a Pro mode that offers live representation when changing White Balance, ISO and Exposure. The front-facing camera has a slider to adjust beauty effect and has a small front photo mirror.
Check out some camera samples (Click the images to view the full resolution sample).
Check out the complete set of Coolpad Dazen 1 samples here. It can record videos at 1080p full HD resolution at 30 fps. Audio is good, thanks to secondary microphone, but the video is just average. Check out the sample below.
httpv://youtu.be/xDySAYZKGBc
Software
The Dazen 1 runs on Android 4.4.4 (KitKat) based on Cool UI 5.7 on top. The company did not say when it will roll out the Android Lollipop update for the smartphone. The UI looks similar to the UI present in most other Chinese smartphones, but this is more plain and doesn’t look attractive. Clicking the Rock Wallpaper icon changes the wallpaper. The drop-down notification has a toggle that shows the number of notifications, which is not comfortable if you want to see notification quickly. The Quick settings option has several toggles and a brightness slider. You can change the order of these toggles from the settings, but you can’t add more. There is a notification manager in settings that lets you block or allow notifications for specific apps.
Even the multitasking menu has a brightness control slider and connectivity toggles. There is also a multi-screen feature that divides the screen into two so that you can run two independent apps on a single screen, similar to Samsung’s multi window. You can even add your existing apps to the multi-screen sidebar. It has several gesture features that includes double-tap to wake, slide down from the lockscreen to capture photos, launch apps by drawing alphabets on the lockscreen and more. The CoolShow app lets you change themes, wallpapers, Lockscreen style, call or alarm tones and more.
Out of 2GB of RAM, about 1.94GB of RAM is usable, out of which 1.4GB of RAM is free on boot with default apps running in the background. Out of 8GB of internal storage you get 4.2GB of usable storage. You can’t move apps to the SD card. There is an option to set SD card as default write disk, but it doesn’t install apps automatically to the SD card or let you move apps to it.
Apps
Apart from the usual set of utility apps and Google Apps, the smartphone comes with WeChat, WhatsApp, Snapdeal, Facebook, Swiftkey Keyboard and WPS Office. There is a Cool Store app to download some Indian apps. This is a good thing instead of filling the phone with apps you don’t need.
Music Player and FM Radio
Google Play Music is the default music player. It can play a range of audio formats and the smartphone also has FM Radio. The loudspeaker output is good, but audio output through third-party earphones could have been better.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has 4G support with support of 4G LTE bands (TDD B40 2300MHz and FDD B3 1800MHz) for India. Only the first slot supports 4G, while the other slot supports only 2G. It has the usual set of connectivity features including, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS, but lacks USB on-the-go (OTG) support. Call quality is decent and we didn’t face any call drops.
Performance and Benchmarks
Coming to the performance, the smartphone is powered by Quad-Core Snapdragon 410 processor with four ARM Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.21GHz. The performance is smooth without any lags. Since it has 2GB RAM, multitasking is smooth too. It gets a bit warm when playing intensive games or using 3G in hot conditions, but it doesn’t get too hot. Check out some synthetic benchmark scores.
Quadrant Benchmark
It managed to score 11431 points in the Quadrant benchmark
AnTuTu Benchmark 5
It scored 20640 points in the AnTuTu Benchmark 5, slightly better than the Honor 4X.
3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited
It scored 4402 points in the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited GPU Benchmark.
Basemark OS II
It scored 587 points in the Basemark OS II benchmark. Check out the complete set of Coolpad Dazen 1 Benchmarks here. It has 400 MHz Adreno 306 GPU. Gaming is decent, but we faced occasional lags in some high-end games. It doesn’t support USB controllers.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the 2500mAh battery offers good battery life. The removable battery is also an added advantage. It got One Charge Rating of 11 hours and 58 minutes, which is good compared to other smartphones in the price range. It lasts for the whole day with average use and for more than a day with minimal use. Check out the complete set of battery life test results here.
Conclusion
At the price tag of Rs. 5,999, the Coolpad Dazen 1 is a definitely a good 4G smartphone. The smartphone is only available through on Snapdeal, which is common these days. Even though the company is a new entrant in India, it has 246 service centers across India, according to its website. We are not sure about the quality of the service though. It runs on Android KitKat OS, lacks OTG support and the camera is not impressive, otherwise the smartphone offers good value for money. If you are looking for a 4G smartphone with good display and solid battery life under Rs. 6,000, the Dazen 1 is a good option. To summarize, here are the pros and cons of the smartphone.
Pros
- Good display
- Good battery life
- Good performance
- Competitive pricing
Cons
- Average camera
- Not an attractive UI based on dated Android 4.4 (KitKat)