Coolpad Mega 2.5D Review
Another Chinese company Coolpad is also known for racing in the budget segment. Now the company has tried to challenge Xiaomi’s new offer by launching Mega 2.5D. At present this phone is available only through flash sale. The 2.5D is a selfie-focused smartphone with great attention to design. It looks like a big rival to the Redmi 3S but we think the Mega 2.5D is a great alternative for those who want a phone with a larger display in this segment.
But is it a good phone? Can this new smartphone from Coolpad attract customers? Today we will review this phone.
Design and design
The Mega 2.5D is definitely a great looking smartphone. And it looks attractive in gold color variant. We can see that Coolpad has paid a lot of attention to the design of this phone. 2.5D As the name suggests, it has a curved display on top of the display. There are black bezels on the sides of the display, giving the illusion of an edge-to-edge panel when the screen is off.
The phone has a 5.5 inch display which comes with HD resolution. This screen is quite common in this segment. However, the pixel density is low for the size of the display, which results in blurring around text. It’s not much better but okay. There is a notification LED at the top and onscreen navigation buttons.
Coolpad Mega 2.5D is not easy to use as it is impossible to use it with one hand. The good thing is, it is not too heavy at only 143 grams. The phone is also quite thin. This phone has a metal frame but its rear is made of plastic. Apart from the screen, the entire phone is fingerprint free which makes it easy to clean. The buttons respond properly.
A hybrid SIM tray is provided on the right side of the phone, while headphone and micro-USB ports are provided on the top and bottom respectively. The back of the phone is slightly curved which makes it feel a little comfortable in the hand. On the rear, there is a camera module at the top and a speaker at the bottom. The problem with having a rounded rear is that it completely blocks off the speaker when placed on a flat surface.
On purchasing the phone, you will get a 7.5 watt power adapter, data cable and a headset in the box. The Fove looks beautiful and is well built. There is no fingerprint sensor in the phone but its absence is acceptable at this price.
Specifications and software
The Coolpad Mega 2.5D has a MediaTek MT6735P quad-core processor, which may not be the best choice at this price point these days. Any other budget chipset from Qualcomm (Snapdragon 410) could also be given in this phone. Coolpad has given 3 GB RAM in the phone which no one has given till now in this price. However, having more RAM does not improve the performance of the phone and its effect is visible on the benchmark results. We got very low numbers from the phone in benchmarking tests.
Talking about the rest of the specifications of the phone, it has features like 16 GB storage (expandable up to 32 GB), Wi-Fi B/G/N, Bluetooth 4.0, UAC OTG, FM radio and GPS. The phone supports 4G and Indian bands on both SIM slots.
This phone running on Android Marshmallow has Coolpad’s unknown CoolUI 8.0 skin. According to us, it needs a lot of improvements and changes. Swiping up from the bottom brings up Control Center, which offers brightness controls, app shortcuts, and toggle switches for customization.
The C button given in the phone is like Xiaomi’s Quick Ball, which gives you a floating circular overlay. It remains at the edges of the display. Holding it down opens a circle of shortcuts.
There are some UI design options and we feel that it would have been better if they were presented in a slightly different way. For example, it is impossible to read an email notification in the notification shade without opening the app. There’s no quicker way to control the music player from the home screen. The theme app provided in the phone is also very useless and the options are very limited and you may not even like the themes you get.
Apart from this, the phone has been provided with ‘Transfer’ app for data transfer from one phone to another, Cool Manager for blocking calls, managing data traffic and locking apps.
performance
The display performance in the phone is very good and its color reproduction is good. The phone is readable in sunlight but the ambient light sensor is a bit slow and responds slowly at times. Sometimes the touch response on the display is not good and the phone does not respond. Call quality is good but the speaker volume is very low during the call. The phone runs well most of the time, although the rear and display cameras get hot during use. We tested it with two different units of Coolpad Mega 2.5D and got similar response from both.
CoolUI 8 looks good at first glance but after setting up a few apps and games, its performance is not very good. Whether you are unlocking the device or switching to another app, you get a sporadic shutter for this in the phone. The phone has a heavy skin with a weak processor, hence even 3 GB RAM cannot do anything in the phone.
Apart from this, the Xiaomi weather notification and headphone jack alert on the phone are also irritating which cannot be removed. And the notification shade is filled with it. Apart from this, another drawback that we noticed is the continuous flashing of the GPS icon. Google’s Now on Tap also does not work although you can enable it. Coolpad says that an update will be available in the coming time.
Full HD video can be played in Mega 2.5D but due to the speaker, the audio performance is quite poor. The audio quality is good from the headset that comes with the phone. The phone has a custom music player named CoolMusic and it is functional. It has many equalizers already available to tweak the music.
The phone has a 2 megapixel front and rear camera and both give average results. The camera app is simple and easy to use. You can swipe up or down for shooting modes like Video, Beauty, Night and Pro. Focus speed is a theme and due to shutter issues the camera has to be held steady to capture a good photo. Macro photos come with good detailing.
Landscape shots have less detail and the object looks a bit blurry when zoomed in. Camera performance is a bit poor in low light and we expected the same from a phone of this price. Video recording can be done with a maximum of 720 pixels but this is also only useful in good lighting. Talking about being a selfie phone, the camera app lacks features like gesture or voice capture. The phone offers Beauty Mode with multiple levels of facial enhancement but overall the camera app could have been better. The front camera takes good pictures indoors.
In our video loop test, the battery provided in the phone lasted for 8 hours and 27 minutes which is not bad. However, during normal usage with two SIMs active, we could only run it for 17-18 hours before the battery showed signs of going down. The battery lasts the same even with a single SIM. Coolpad has provided a standby power saving option which turns the stock launcher into a basic launcher and you can only do messaging and calling. However, we don’t understand why Coolpad didn’t provide a bigger battery in this phone? Looking at the size of the phone, we expected to get a 4000 mAh battery in the phone.
our decision
The Coolpad Mega 2.5D smartphone looks like a good phone at first glance but after using it for a week, we were a little disappointed. This phone could have been a good alternative to Redmi 3S and it is a large screen phone. But the poor component selection of the phone makes it lose to Redmi 3S.
We are especially talking about its chipset and battery. Both of these spoiled the phone experience. The heavy skin given on Marshmallow is also not good and due to the weak processor it causes a lot of trouble. Camera and battery are two areas where the 2.5D stumbles.
The design of the phone is probably the only thing that makes a phone look good but a phone cannot be bought just on the basis of beauty. We hope to see an upgraded variant of the Mega 2.5D with a stronger and newer CPU, a bigger battery, and a more optimized interface to make it a better phone at this price.
Currently, Xiaomi Redmi 3S is the best phone in this category and Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus (Review) comes at the second place.
