Coolpad Cool 1 Dual Review (LeEco C103): A 13 MP Dual Camera Phone in Budget

The LeEco Coolpad Cool 1 Dual (C103) is the latest phone by the Coolpad after joining the hands with LeEco. Coolpad has always known for its high specs phones at low prices. Following their legacy, the Coolpad has done the same thing with Coolpad Cool 1 Dual which is at Rs 13,999. The LeEco Cool 1 directly compete with couples of smartphones phones such as Moto G4 Plus, Xiaomi Mi Max, Nubia N1.  The key highlight and unique feature of this phone is Dual 13MP camera setup. We are using this phone from one eight days and here is our review on Coolpad Cool 1. Let’s see, is the Dual camera setup and good specs would really help the phone to get a space in your pocket.

LeEco Coolpad Cool 1 Dual Review in detail

What you get in the Coolpad Cool 1 Dual box

The LeEco Coolpad Cool 1 is right now available in silver color in India. After unboxing LeEco Coolpad Cool 1, what we got inside the box is as follow:

• LeEco Coolpad Cool 1 Dual handset
• Type C USB cable
• Charger (5V-2A)
• SIM ejector tool
• Screen guard
• Quickstart Guide and warranty information

What are the special features in Coolpad Cool 1 Dual?

• 4000mAh battery
• VoLTE connectivity
• Dual 13Mp camera Setup
• Higher RAM of 4GB
• 32GB internal memory
• 5.5 inches display
• Fingerprint sensor
• Qualcomm MSM8976 Snapdragon 652 Processor
• Metallic Design

See: Full Detailed Coolpad Cool 1 Dual specifications

Coolpad Cool 1 Dual Design review

The design of Coolpad Cool 1 is totally different from the previous Coolpad phones. It is something mixture of LeEco Le 2 and Coolpad previous models.  The cool 1 design is sturdy and feels comfortable in the hands. Starting from the backside of the phone, the back panel is of matte finish metallic piece which is sandwich between two plastic pieces.

On its metallic panel at the back side, the phone comprises the glass finish fingerprint sensor, dual camera setup (vertically aligned) and dual color LED flashlight. The 3.5mm headphone jack with an infrared port sits at the top of the phone whereas the bottom has the Type-C port flanked between two speaker grills. Between two speaker grills, only one has the speaker.  The grills holes are carved out from the piece of plastic but in a very symmetric manner.

The phone has dual sim card support and to accept them it has SIM tray on the left side and to manage the volume and power on/off functions, the buttons are on the right side. Coming to the front side, the front side of the cell phone flaunts 5.5inces display. The chamfered edges along silver color strips on the front side gives a premium look to this smartphone. The upper and lower portion of the display has white color strips. The upper strip is used for ear speaker which is situated between light sensor and front camera whereas the notification LED got its space at the extreme right side of the strip. The hidden backlit navigation button on the lower part of the display only show when your touch them. Overall the design of Coolpad cool 1 Dual phone looks very premium and doesn’t feel bulky in the hands.

Coolpad Cool 1 Dual Display review

The Coolpad Cool 1 Dual comes with 5.5-inch IPS 1080 x 1920 pixels (FHD) & 401 ppi. The bezels around the display are fairly less along the black border all around. The colors produced by the display are vibrant and natural, no over saturation has been there.  At the angle of 70 degrees one can easily read the text and enjoy the video, that means three people can easily share the screen. The Coolpad cool 1 dual also has one option called color mode that gives the ability to change the tone of the display. The four color modes are LeEco, Vivid, Natural, and Soft. To enhancing the screen color saturation and smoothness it also has Video display Enhancement option.

For display protection, there is no extra layer but Coolpad has given a screen guard in the box to secure the display from day to day scratches, moreover, at this price point, we also can’t demand Gorilla glass.

Also see: Coolpad cool 1 Dual vs Xiaomi redmi note 3 Phone Comparison

LeEco Cool 1 software review: A LeEco’s proprietary EUI on Coolpad

The software of Cool 1 Dual runs on the EUI 5.8.017 on the top of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. There is no major difference between EUI OS on LeECO’s phone and what we find on Coolpad coo1 apart from the LeEco services like LeVidi and LeView. The pre-built apps on the phone are Fm radio app, Infrared remote app, Yahoo, Wheather and Amazon India app.

The notifications can access by swiping down from the top while the quick toggles, settings, and recent apps can access by tapping the square navigation capacitive key. The OS is quite smooth and snappy just the LeEco phone OS.

 

 Coolpad Cool 1 Dual Camera review: Is the camera quality of Coolpad Cool 1 good?

Dual camera setup becomes very popular, nowadays and mostly seen in the high-end phones but Coolpad has brought this in the budget. The main USP of Coolpad dual is the dual vertically aligned camera along with dual tone LED flashlight.  The benefit of the dual camera setup is it provides better depth and quality in pictures. The Cool 1 Dual rear camera is of 13Mp: One camera captures the monochrome and other is for color.  Both 13MP camera comes with a f/2.0 aperture and phase detection autofocus (PDAF) feature.

Recently launched Nubia N1 (review) near about the price of the cool 1 was promoted by the Nubia for its Pro camera feature. But the pro mode, we have found on the Cool 1 is much better. The camera pro mode gives you some capabilities like DSLR’s to control ISO, White balance, Exposure time and Focus.

Coming to the image quality, the pictures capture by the cool 1 are good in daylight but grainy in the night. The low light images are also good and but the detailing we are getting in the daylight is much better as compared to low light images. We have also tried the manual exposure feature that really works well too in the low light environment. The camera also has an option to create blur effect digitally like DSLR. The front camera is 8 Mega Pixel and easily manage to provide sharp and bright images. You can also shoot 720P,1080P and 4K videos with its rear camera.

We have seen that many websites have mentioned that the images captured by the Cool 1 is not very much impressive but I don’t think so because the quality I have got from this is far better as compared to other phone coming at this price point. I am not a fan of Coolpad or LeEco but I am saying, whatever I have got from its dual camera. You can look at the images given below to take a decision before buying it.

Coolpad Cool 1 camera Images gallery

Photo captured by using the pro mode of the camera

Night Shots of Coolpad cool1 camera

Coolpad Cool 1 Dual Battery review: Enough to stand for whole day

The phone packed with a 4000mAh battery and really did a very good job in our test. I was using it with a reliance 4G JIO SIM that means the phone runs on 4G network with medium call flow, some social chit chats such as Whatsapp, Facebook along with some media. And I have successfully manage to get a whole day backup.  To get some theoretical results we ran a PCMark battery test on it i.e “Work battery PC benchmark” and the result is 10hours and 7 minutes. The phone take more than 2 hours to get fully charged by using its own charger.

 How is the overall performance of the Coolpad Cool 1?  

The smartphone is powered by Snapdragon 652 processor and 4GB RAM for multitasking along Adreno 510 GPU to handle the graphics.  For storage, it has 32 GB inbuilt storage and sadly there is not microSD slot to expand the inbuilt memory. The performance of the phone was really good, it handles the multitasking with great ease. The switching between application was also quite snappy, even the high-end graphics games like Asphalt 8: Airborne run smoothly. There’s no worry of overheating while gaming, charging and using the camera which was common in LeEco le 1s eco.

Benchmarks Screenshots

The call quality is normal like other phones but it clear and no network or call drop issues were found during usage. At the bottom, out two speaker grills, only one possess the speaker module and sound it produces is decent for media and alerts.  The fingerprint scanner works well too and unlock the phone instantly. Overall the performance is impressive if you look at the price point. None of the smartphones in the market is available with dual camera configuration at the price of Rs 13,999/.  No doubt that Coolpad Cool 1 has a tough competition against the well-established smartphone brands in India such Xiaomi, Lenovo, Moto, Samsung, but if you look at the price and the hardware configuration then it can easily compete with the phones coming at this price range.

 

Coolpad cool 1 Dual Review Synopsis

For offline the Coolpad cool 1 Dual is available in 3Gb RAM variant and for online (Amazon) it comes with 4GB RAM but at the same price of 13,999. The strange thing is that there is no huge difference between look and feel of LeEco phones and Coolpad Cool1 and why the company branding the same type of phone under two brand names. But whatever the Coolpad Cool 1 Dual offers is really value for money; sharp display, good camera, performance, and battery but under a budget. Yet, one thing which little bit disappoints us is the fixed storage space of 32 Gb, there is no dedicated or hybrid microSD card slot option to expand the storage but still, the 32GB is an ample storage. So, if you want to buy a phone at 14k, the Coolpad cool 1 is could be your first choice but try to buy the 4GB RAM model to get the real value of money you’re going to spend on this phone. One more thing is if you compare Nubia N1 with Coolpad Cool1 Dual the only thing is Camera that make it stand other wise in terms of specs the Nubia N1 is much better.

Also see: ZTE nubia N1 vs Coolpad Cool 1 Dual Phone Comparision

 

Pros: 

• Dual camera
• 4GB RAM
• IR Blaster
• Good Battery Backup

Cons:

• No microSD slot