Coolpad Cool Play 6: Walks the walk, but fails to talk the talk

Competition in the budget smartphone segment is getting fiercer by the day. There’s a race on between smartphone makers to offer biggest RAM or a massive battery and companies are releasing phones one after the other to always be on the top in terms of specs sheet of the handset.

One such example of this “spec-race” is the latest smartphone from Coolpad . The Cool Play 6 smartphone has 6GB RAM, 64GB internal storage, 13MP dual rear camera setup, 4,000mAh battery for Rs 14,999 only. Pretty impressive, right?

We tested out this “too good to be true” smartphone for a couple of days and here is our review:



Design and display


In terms of appearance, the Cool Play 6 looks very similar to the Cool1 – the earlier Coolpad smartphone -- specially from the back due to the placement of the dual rear camera and the fingerprint sensor. The smartphone comes in a metal unibody design with plastic edges that are quite apparent due to the discolouration.

At the back, besides the vertical dual rear camera and the fingerprint sensor, the smartphone also houses the dual-LED flash, along with Coolpad branding at the bottom.

The bottom of the device consists of USB Type-C and stereo speakers, while the top has the 3.5mm audio jack. There's a volume rocker and power button on the right, while the left side has a SIM card tray.The front is primarily dominated by the 5.5-inch full HD display with 1080x1920 pixel resolution and 403 ppi. According to us, the display is rich as is the colour production. It offers good visibility even under the sun. The viewing angles are also decent. But that being said, the device has thick enough black bezels to make you notice and therefore leaving the viewing experience a bit imperfect. The display offers various modes such as Vivid, Natural and Eye Care modes. It even offers Display size and font size toggles for better readability.

The front also houses one home button key, two capacitive (backlit) keys -- for multi-tasking and going one page back -- along with an 8MP selfie camera, earpiece and the usual array of sensors on the top edge.

Overall, we can say that Coolpad Coolplay 6 doesn't feel big and is comfortable for one hand operation despite a 5.5-inch screen size. It is a sturdily built smartphone that doesn't feel cheap or made of substandard quality.



Performance and camera



Coolpad Cool Play 6 is powered by a 64-bit, 1.4GHz octa-core Snapdragon 653 processor coupled with 6GB RAM. For storage, the device offers 64GB internal storage with no microSD card support, so users will have to make do with limited storage.The Cool Play 6 runs Android 7.1.1 Marshmallow, along with Journey UI baked on top. The interface is clean and user-friendly. However, there is no app drawer and all apps are placed on multiple home-screens. Users can choose from two pre-loaded themes and set up to 5 fingerprints for identification. It offers features such as 'Find My Device' that will allow it to lock or erase a lost device; 'Screen pinning' that allows you to keep the current screen in view until you unpin it. The smartphone also comes pre-installed with apps such as Facebook, Amazon, UC News, UC Browser, Xender, which can be uninstalled

During our testing, we did face some issues with the device. Even though the smartphone could handle multi-app switching, we saw several app crashes. We also witnessed that the device got a bit warm with constant use.We found the network reception satisfactory and the call quality was good even in areas where signal was weak. The audio quality from the speaker -- which is placed at the bottom -- is good, but holding the smartphone in landscape orientation somewhat reduces the output.

The Coolpad Cool Play 6 is backed by a 4,000mAh battery that lasted us for longer than a day of average use which included playing games and browsing social media apps, with Wi-Fi turned on.We ran Antutu and GeekBench 4 tests on the device. While the single-core and multi-core scores on GeekBench 4 were 1411 and 4281 respectively, the Antutu app kept crashing so we could not record the score.Moving on to the cameras, the Cool Play 6 comes with a dual rear camera setup with two 13MP modules for depth of field and monochrome functionalities. The camera comes with f/2.0 aperture and dual-tone LED flash. There's also an 8MP front camera with /2.2 aperture for selfies. While the rear camera is capable of recording 720p, 1080p and 4K video, the front camera offers 480p, 720p and 1080p.Some of the camera modes included in the Cool Play 6 are Panorama, long exposure and Professional mode. The 'Pro' mode in the camera app allows users to configure multiple options for controlling the shutter speed and ISO range. There is also a separate 'Beauty mode' that offers features such as whiten, smooth, slim, enlarge.

In our testing, the images captured by the 13MP rear dual cameras turned out to be good in day light as they had better colours. The bokeh effect was also much better than other phones such as the Lenovo K8 Note or the Nubia Z17 Mini as it able to make out the difference between foreground and background. Even at tricky angles, the object in the focus did not blur out and turned out to be uniform. The 8MP front camera was decent but did feel a bit artificial due to beautification.

Verdict

The Coolpad Cool Play 6 offers premium design packaged, a considerable battery life and a good dual rear camera – probably one of the best bokeh effects we have seen for smartphones in this price segment. But, the app crashes and heating problems are major issues that one cannot ignore and therefore we cannot recommend the device fully. If you are looking for a smartphone in Rs 14,000 – Rs 16,000 bracket, the Nokia 6 or Moto G5 Plus could perhaps be better alternatives.