Coolpad Note 3 Lite, a new budget smartphone from the Chinese company was launched in India last month for Rs. 6,999. It is a smaller variant of Coolpad Note 3, which was launched in India last year for Rs. 8,999.
The Coolpad Note 3 Lite is the cheapest smartphone which comes with fingerprint sensor. Fingerprint scanner adds another layer of security. It also comes with 3GB of RAM.
We are using the Coolpad Note 3 Lite for over a month and now we are posting our detailed review of the device. Lets check out whether the Note 3 Lite keeps up the tag of best budget smartphone or not in our detailed review.
Box Contents:
Lets start with the box contents of Coolpad Note 3 Lite. We have already published the unboxing video on our YouTube channel. In case you have not watched it, you can watch it below.:
In the box you will find a Handset, Charger, USB Cable, In-Ear earphone, Screen guard and user guide. The phone comes with a non-removable battery.
Design:
Coolpad Note 3 Lite looks very similar to bigger sibling. The phone comes with a plastic back cover. The back cover has textured pattern which makes it less slippery. The Note 3 Lite has golden border, while the back is of white color. The phone doesn’t looks cheap.
The front side is dominated by a 5 inch screen with black bezels. On the front side, there is a front camera, proximity sensor, three capacitive buttons. The buttons doesn’t lit up as they don’t have backlit. On the left side, there is volume rocker.
On the back side, there is a rear camera, LED flash, fingerprint sensor, speaker grill. On the top side, Coolpad Note 3 Lite has 3.5mm audio jack. On the bottom side, it has Micro USB port and mic. On the right side there is a power button.
Display:
Coolpad Note 3 Lite comes with a 5 inch HD screen which translates to 720×1280 pixels. The company doesn’t confirm the presence of any protection on the screen. In our review, we found that the screen is prone to scratches. To avoid the scratch, use the provided screen guard.
The screen of Coolpad Note 3 Lite is good. It offers good viewing angles. Sunlight visibility is good too but not the best. You will find it difficult to read the display under direct sunlight.
Under the Hood / Performance:
Coolpad Note 3 Lite is powered by a 64 bit Quad Core Mediatek MT6735 processor clocked at 1.3GHz. For the graphics, it has Mali T-720 GPU. To complement the System On Chip (SoC), it has 3GB of RAM. The company has kept the same RAM as found in the bigger variant.
Finding a device with 3GB RAM at this price is difficult. The phone does performs well. You will not find much lags when accessing apps. The smartphone handles multitasking easily. On opening multiple apps, you will not notice any lags/delay.
The Gaming performance is satisfactory for low intensive games. Once you play Graphic intensive or heavy games, you will start finding lags. Considering the price, one can neglect the graphical performance. Coolpad has used MT6735 in the Note 3 Lite, while its bigger sibling is powered by a Octa Core MT6753. So the company has fixed downgraded chip on the new smartphone.
Coolpad Note 3 Lite doesn’t have heating issues. On heavy gaming, you will notice that the device gets warm, but that’s normal. The phone score 33,071 points in AnTuTu benchmark test.
Camera:
On the camera department, Coolpad Note 3 Lite comes with a 13 Megapixel rear camera with LED flash. On the front side, there is a 5 Megapixel camera. The camera performance is just above average. But considering the price, one can find decent camera performance.
The rear camera is good and it can take good pictures. The camera app performance is sluggish, The app takes time to perform actions. It comes with HDR and other features. The rear camera on Coolpad Note 3 Lite can shoot videos in 1080p resolution. The videos captured by the device is good. The phone does struggles in taking night shots. In daylight, the pictures are good, the camera captures good details as well.
The front camera on the Coolpad Note 3 Lite is average. It does the job of clicking selfies. It comes with several modes like Beauty mode. Overall the rear camera is good and front camera is good too.
Battery:
Coolpad Note 3 Lite disappoints in the battery department. It comes with 2,600mAh battery. The battery takes too much time to charge completely. The battery can last over a day on normal usage. The company could have improved the battery by keeping the 3,000mAh battery from the Note 3.
Storage/ Connectivity:
Coolpad Note 3 Lite comes with 16GB of internal storage and 3GB RAM. It also comes with an option to expand its storage upto 32 GB via MicroSD Card. You will get around 10GB of storage for your use, rest of the memory is used by the system. You can also expand its storage via USB OTG. Recently we published the view of USB OTG support on Note 3 Lite. You can check it below.
Its connectivity options include 4G, LTE, 3G, GPRS/EDGE, Wi-Fi, GPS/AGPS, GLONASS, Wi-Fi Direct, WLAN, Bluetooth, FM Radio, USB OTG, and Micro-USB. It is a dual sim device. It supports 4G LTE connectivity on both slots. We didn’t checked the 4G performance of the device.
Security:
Coolpad Note 3 Lite comes with fingerprint sensor on its back, The fingerprint scanner is really fast and it unlocks the device within a second. You can assign upto five fingers. Each finger can be assigned different tasks like Unlocking the device, Quick Capture, One Key Dial or opening apps. Coolpad has added FP Lock app through which you can lock specific apps. The fingerprint sensor performs like it should.
Software:
Coolpad Note 3 Lite runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop with a layer of company own Cool UI. The UI is good and offers several features. There is no app drawer, all apps can be accessed via Home screens only. The first screen is taken by Coolpad Store widget and other pre-installed apps. Coolstore shows promote apps. It comes with other installed apps like Cool Service, Cool Store, Cool Show, File manager, FP Lock, Rock Wallpaper, Amazon, Facebook, WPS Office, Xploree, WeChat, and WhatsApp. It also comes with Google apps like GMail, YouTube, Maps, Drive, Play Music, Voice search and others.
Coolpad has pushed several software updates on the Coolpad Note 3 Lite. The latest version is V019. The update has optimized camera effects, Improve Wi-Fi performance, Optimized OTA process, Battery enhancements, Apps performance improvements and other bug fixes. The company has added Hungama Music and Hungama Video app in the latest update.
Final Verdict:
So should you buy the Coolpad Note 3 Lite at Rs. 6,999? Well if you are low on budget and want small screen, fingerprint sensor at affordable price then you can go for it. But for me 5 inch screen is very small, it does fits in hands properly, but watching videos and playing games on smaller screen doesn’t gives best performance. If you ask me, i would suggest you to buy its bigger variant, Coolpad Note 3. Its performance in every aspect is better than the Lite variant. But still, Coolpad Note 3 Lite offers great performance at this price. So it is one of the best budget smartphone in India.
