Hello Readers of Tech Glows, today we are back with an in depth review of a smartphone. It is Coolpad Dazen 1, a leading Chinese Smartphone company by Yulong. Coolpad Dazen 1 was launched in India on 28 May 2015. This smartphone claims to be the best budget smartphone and giving a tough competition to Xiaomi Redmi 2, Lenovo A6000 Plus and Micromax Yu Yuphoria. Previously it’s price in India was Rs. 6,999 but later it was slashed to Rs. 5,999. Currently this smartphone is available to buy online via flash sales at SnapDeal. So below is the Coolpad Dazen 1 Review.
Quick specifications
- 2GB RAM
- Snapdragon Qualcomm 410 Quad core 1.2 GHz processor (64-bit)
- 5inch display IPS 720p with 178° viewing angle
- 8MP Rear + 5MP front Camera
- 8 GB internal + expandable up to 32GB
- Dual sim
- 4G LTE
- 2500 mAh Removable Battery
- Android Kitkat 4.4.4 with CoolUI (a custom UI built by coolpad).
In the Box Coolpad Dazen 1, Battery, USB Cable, 1A Charger and Manual.
Look and Feel
It’s a 5 inch smartphone and we feel very easy to use it from one hand. The phone gives a black look from front and white from back (Just like Redmj 2). The phone is slim and weighs just 155gm, which we feel is not too heavy. There are three touch buttons as usual. They light up on touch with white LED. The volume rockers are left and the lock buttons is at right. At the bottom there’s a charging port and at top there’s a 3.5mm audio jack. Coming to back the camera is placed at center. Above which there’s a noice cancellation mic. To the right of camera there’s a dual LED flash light. The speaker grille is placed at back and above it we can find Coolpad’s branding. The back is glossy and it is very slippery. So we suggest you to purchase a back cover for it.
Screen
The screen is 720p 5inch IPS with 178°viewing angles. It has 320dpi. The colors are bright. The brightness works great even in daylight. One thing to note is this smartphone doesn’t have any screen protection like gorilla glass 3. So its compulsory to install a screen guard or a tempered glass. Regarding touch it’s not excellent but its not bad too. Its decent and responsive. We tested it’s multi touch using multi touch tester app and got 5 points.
Camera
There’s a 8mp rear camera with features like Autofocus, beautification, HDR, sound and shot, night shot, filters, etc. Also there’s a LED flash light. There’s a feature called as capture smiles which automatically captures your pictures when you smile. So there’s no need to feel disappointed if you miss smiling moments, as it will do its job very well.
The camera works great in outdoors. One thing I noticed is that it can’t focus objects very near to it. But the far objects or the objects with some 1 feet can be focused with it. There’s a built in picture focus mode which helps to take pictures like DSLR.
It doesn’t works great in low light conditions. But if you use flash it will deliver some good shots. The rear camera can shoot 1080p videos. There are features like instant photo capturing while video recording also you can pause the video recording.
Coming to front camera its having a 5MP camera with features like beautification, HDR, night shot, capture smiles. Though it claims to shoot 1080p videos in front camera too but it doesn’t stands on it. We liked the HDR mode in front camera since most of the smartphone doesn’t provides this feature. It Captures selfies with good quality in seconds.
User interface and Software
There’s no app drawer and the applications gets installed on the home screen just like iPhone. But you can try different launchers like Google launcher, Nova launcher, etc. You can also sort your apps and keep them in a folder just like MIUI. One interesting thing is there’s an icon on the home screen named Rock Wallpaper on clicking which it will set a random wallpaper instantly. And this UI is very simple and lagless. No issues at all.
Recent apps tray
The recent apps tray looks cool. The recent apps can be cleared and they can also be locked. So as to keep them running while we clear ram. It also consists of toggles like rotation, airplane, vibrate, mute, flash light, brightness, etc. You can also edit them according to your needs.
It Comes with Whatsapp, Facebook, snapdeal, swiftkey keyboard, wps office, google apps preloaded and tools like sound recorder, calculator, flashlight, FM radio, memo
Gestures
There’s a Double click wakeup lock screen feature. We can also draw “o” to open Facebook directly from lock screen. We can also draw letter “c” to open camera from lock screen, “w” for Whatsapp, etc. There’s also glove mode, mis touch prevention, feature.
Lock screen
It has the standard lock screen security features like Slide, pin, password, pattern and a new feature namely face lock. We’ve tested face lock it works flawlessly. On the lock screen you can swipe right to open camera and left to open calls.
It also supports Multi windows (just like Samsung Galaxy phones). I’ve tried this feature with video playing and messaging app. And it works fine.
The Notifications are just like Xiaomi MI
You can slide them to dismiss. But they are arranged well using a 3 dots like icon. So there will be no loads of notifications as soon as you open the tray. You have to click on that 3 dots icon to access all the notifications.Overall, We can say that the notifications are Simplified.
Also there are lock screen notifications for some applications like Facebook, Whatsapp, Gmail and messaging app. You can also configure which app can notify you using notification settings. Also there’s a indicator light which lights up during charging, low battery, messages, calls, etc.
Performance
It comes with 2 GB of RAM which makes it easy for multitasking powered by a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm snapdragon 410 processor (64 bit and Quad Core). The device lags does not lags at all. Even when gaming and playing HD videos. We recorded a score of 20162 in AnTuTu Benchmarks. The Cool UI manages the RAM very well there’s always a 1 GB of free RAM available. The 64 bit quad core processor makes every process run smoothly.
Gaming
We’ve tried playing some heavy games like asphalt 8 and real racing 3. There was less heating compared to others. But there’s nothing to worry as its normal. Coming to gaming performance it’s just good but not excellent. Since it was not able to play asphalt 8 in high graphics mode. In medium it was working fine. There were no issues. It is having Adreno 306 GPU.
Battery
We just loved its battery performance. For a normal user it can last for 2 days. And for a heavy user 7-8 hours. (Includes high end gaming, HD video playing).
Sound
The sound is pretty good. We liked it and compared with the speaker of redmi 2. But we found its voice a bit loud.
Call quality is decent. The noice cancellation works great.
Connectivity
Coolpad Dazen 1 supports 4G LTE. Besides it also supports 3G and 2G. It has Dual Sim support (Micro Sim). It has the all the standard connectivity features like WiFi 802.11 b/g n , Bluetooth 4.0, etc. Call quality was awesome on this smartphone.
Storage
It is having 8 GB of internal storage out of which only 4.75GB is usable. It can be expanded up to 32GB via micro SD slot. One thing which disappointed me is it doesn’t supports USB OTG.
Sensors
It doesn’t have too many sensors. Only some sensors like Proximity, light and Accelerometer are available. So it might disappoint if you want more sensors like gyro, direction, temperature, pressure, compass, etc.
Final Verdict
Coolpad Dazen 1 promises to provide Stunning Performance at Unbelievable price. And Yes it’s truly a budget smartphone giving a tough competition to Xiaomi Redmi 2 and Yuphoria. Though I feel it’s camera could be better than Redmi 2 but stills it wins in some other aspects like 2GB RAM, 64 Bit processor, 5 MP front camera, etc. The phone is lagless and will not let you go down. Overall its a good smartphone and a value for money.
What do you think about Coolpad Dazen 1? Will it give a tough competition to other budget smartphones? Comment down with your views. 🙂 Don’t forget to share and subscribe to our mailing list.
Do check out best android phones under 5000
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