Review: Coolpad Dazen 1 smartphone

The Dazen 1 has a plastic body and a basic design, and is available in a combination of white and black only. Photographs by Priyanka Parashar/Mint

Brands such as Xiaomi, OnePlus and Lenovo have changed the perception of Chinese phones in India, and Coolpad, the third-largest phone manufacturer in China, is looking to take advantage of that with its Dazen 1, priced at Rs.5,999.

WHAT WORKS

Crisp and colourful display

The Dazen 1 has a 5-inch 1280x720pixel resolution screen that is good for reading, playing games and watching movies as it handles most text and colours well. The brightness is a tad dull when on a lower setting. If you enable the auto-brightness mode, outdoor visibility and legibility in bright lights is significantly improved. However, the same auto-brightness mode actually makes the screen a tad too dark when in a dimly lit room—that is perhaps to conserve battery. Nevertheless, this display does most things well, and the brightness management is something the company can tweak by a simple software update.

Quick and efficient

Dazen 1 packs in a fairly powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core 64-bit processor, which is paired with 2GB RAM. It is compatible with 4G networks, which few affordable Android phones are—the YU Yuphoria (Rs.6,999)and the Moto E 4G (Rs.6,999) are two other examples. The Dazen 1 can handle most basic chores without any heating issues. The UI looks similar to Xiaomi’s MIUI, but is not as resource intensive—even with eight apps, including the graphic-heavy Temple Run 2 game, running at the same time, the Dazen 1 didn’t slow down or feel sluggish.

The internal storage is somewhat limited; there is 8GB internal storage, out of which 4GB is available to the user. But, there is a micro SD slot, in case you plan on storing a lot of music or photos on the phone.

A dependable battery

Dazen 1 comes with a 2500mAh battery. The back panel of the phone can be opened, so the battery can be removed and replaced by the user—no need to go to the service centre for a task as simple as this. A fully charged battery lasted a full day’s use, which included social networking, web browsing, 2 hours of watching movies and 30 minutes of gaming.

Simple design

The Dazen 1 has a plastic body and a basic design. It is slightly on the thicker side, a bit like the Microsoft Lumia 640 (Rs.8,999), and is available in a combination of white and black only. While it may not have stunning looks, the Dazen 1 is a comfortable phone to hold, thanks to the arched edges on all four sides.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK

Camera, a let down

The Dazen 1 comes with an 8-megapixel camera with touch to focus and an LED flash. It handles colours well but fails in producing detail and sharpness. The picture starts to distort the moment you zoom in. There is way too much noise in low-light shots. The camera app has a pro-mode that offers greater control over settings such as ISO and colour, but no amount of tweaks to these settings led to any visible improvement in the picture quality. The camera takes photos quickly, and the interface is simple to use, but that doesn’t make up for the disappointment of the end product.

Old Android and confusing UI

The phone runs on Android 4.4.4 (KitKat) with a heavily customised user interface known as Cool UI. It is similar to the UI used by other major Chinese players such as Xiaomi. This does look colourful and comes with more customization options than a plain Android UI. However it is a little difficult to navigate through as the app icons look identical to each other. It is a disappointment that the Dazen 1 runs on Android 4.4.4 (kitKat) instead of the newer Android 5.0 (Lollipop) operating system.