Coolpad Dazen X7 – Just short of a boundary
Chinese Mobile companies entering the Indian market with their attractive mobiles luring customers with the great match between price and features, is not something new. It has been happening for a while now and some of those brands have succeeded in setting up a strong base for themselves in India. This trend has been happening at a slow and steady pace with brands like Huawei, Lenovo, Gionee, ZTE, etc. But the actual boom happened after Xiaomi entered India. Following its success, many Chinese manufactures have started realizing the potential of Indian market and are now setting up their base in India. Coolpad is one of the recent ones to enter India. They are here with two models to start with and both these models are fighting against the established offerings from their Chinese com(t)rades.
Coolpad was founded in 1993 and it became a listed company in 2004. They offer integrated solutions for smart-phone and mobile data platform systems. After a recent round of investment, Coolpad has started to gain expertise in the smart-phone business. In India they are introducing a brand of mobile phones, called the Dazen. They have introduced Coolpad Dazen 1 and Coolpad Dazen X7 as a means to test the market and also create a name for themselves in India.
A Design that make you look at it twice
We have talked about the Coolpad Dazen 1 in detail in an earlier post. Now lets inspect the Dazen X7. The Dazen X7 is a premium looking device with glass back and metal edges. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front and the back. The sides are anodized aluminium. The metal rims give it a premium feel, but it is very slippery to hold in the hand and operate. The bottom has 2 speaker grills, but only one of the grill houses a mono speaker, the other has the mic. Also the USB port is at the bottom. The top has a noise cancelling mic and a 3.5 mm audio jack. The left side has the volume keys. The right has the power button and dual SIM slots. Slot 1 can either hold a nano SIM or a microSD card. The second slot holds a micro SIM slot. The hybrid sim slot is to keep the thin profile of the device, but I found it a bit limiting. You either have a dual SIM mobile or trade it with a memory bay. The back has the 13 MP camera assisted by a dual tone LED flash. The camera housing is jutting out of the body and it is not only prone to scratches, it also doesn’t give the much loved flush design to the mobile. The mobile is very thin at just 6.5 mm and it weighs 131 grams. It is a unibody design with a non-removable back and that means you cannot replace the battery on your own. Overall the construction feels very strudy and the design is stylish as well. I wouldn’t exactly call it a premium looking device, but its almost there. The device is also capable 4G LTE connection in India.
Dazzling Display
The Dazen X7 has one the best displays I have seen. It is a 5.2 inch super AMOLED screen capable of 1920 x 1080 pixels. It has a pixel density of ~442 ppi. The quality is very sharp and the colors are vivid and bright. The viewing angles are great but it suffers slighly under direct sunlight. Otherwise this a great display for all entertainment needs. The moment you unlock the phone, the sheer brilliance of the display strikes you. We love AMOLED screens, don’t we?
Powerful, yet…
Under the hood, the Dazen X7 is powered by MT6595M octa-core MediaTek processor. 4 cores are clocked at 2 GHz and 4 are clocked at 1.5 GHz. There is also a dedicated on-board graphics processor, the PowerVR G6200. It has dual channel 2 GB 933 MHz RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. Under gaming, I found the the Dazen X7 was really smooth, but it heated up on prolonged gaming. In my experience, I found that any thin device heats up faster due to zero gap design that doesn’t account for heat dissipation. Even under normal usage you would feel this Coolpad to be a bit warm. But that’s actually within 35 degree Celsius and that’s a design trade off we must overlook for the Dazen X7’s thin profile. Also the 2 GB RAM is much of a multitasking expert. The device lagged a bit and showed signs of stuttering when I had more than 10 processes running in the background. Especially when you are paying around Rs 18k for this device, you would naturally compare it with the likes of OnePlus One or Mi4 which is not fair because of the processor and other hardware spec. But the price and the performance doesn’t make sense. Probably if it is priced at around Rs 15 k, it would have been more fitting.
UI, Old wine in new bottle
Another major drawback is that the device runs on Android 4.4.2 out of the box which is history these days. The customized UI on top is called the CoolUI and it has striking resemblance with the MIUI. It looks good and works fast. However find an app is a tasking task. There are a few little options to customize the look and feel. But nothing comes close to the grandeur of MIUI’s customization ability. Why in the hell would all the notifications be colapsed into a folder called notifications in the notification bar? That was really frustrating. Anyways that is just the default launcher and I ended up installed Apus for a better launcher experience. Also not many bloat-wares installed in the mobile, which is a pleasure. Overall the UI, though lacks originality in design, still works, but it could have been better. Seriously guys, what is wrong with vanilla android experience? Why take the pains of skinning it? enlighten me!
Camera, Killer shots
I may have cribbed about a lot so far, but when it comes to camera, I am filled with joy. The Dazen X7 has a great camera. The 13 MP Sony IMX214 sensor is magic. The 6 element lens has a wide aperture of f/1.8. The color reproduction is pretty and pretty accurate. The details of the image come out well. There is also a pro mode to give you the extra control. But the camera UI has a lot of resemblance to iPhone UI and the UI where you toggle to different modes, is very similar to ZenFone 2’s camera UI and then the pro mode is a literal copy from Nokia Lumia Pro Camera application. Would have been good to see some originality in the UI design.The camera does produce some brilliant results but there are many formidable competitors in this price segment who can stretch beyond Dazen X7’s ability. But that is just me comparing. On its own, this is a great camera and you won’t regret an iota if you love taking shots with your mobile. If I had to complain, I would say that the focusing speed and accuracy is not great. The front facing camera is a 8 MP shooter and its a marvel as well. Though it does not auto focus, it has a wide angle lens and produces bright and detailed selfies.
Camera Samples
Loud, but not quality sound
The speaker is incredibly loud for a mono speaker. But the quality of the sound is not very pleasant. Especially when you put on the telephonic call on speaker, the voice is very tinny. For regular telephonic calls, I never faced any issue with network while using the mobile. The metal rim and the placement of the ear piece could get a little uncomfortable on prolonged calls. Also the performance of 4G LTE connection was pretty decent.
Battery with drainage plugged out
Battery is a huge let down. The device does not even last a day with my normal usage. It is powered by a non-removable Lithium polymer 2700 mAh battery. The battery looks to be powerful enough on the paper, but somewhere there is bad code or a poor kernel that doesn’t let the battery last a day.
Verdict
The device is not yet available in market and when it is available we wish it fixes a few issues before going on sale. Coolpad if you are reading this, reduce the price to about Rs 15k. Optimize the software and kernel for better battery usage. Upgrade the OS to Android 5.0. These asks are not impossible and am sure it can be done before the release. If these 3 issues are taken care of, then the Coolpad Dazen X7 is an amazing device to own and flaunt.