The Coolpad Dazen 1 was recently launched in India for Rs. 6,999. The first flash sale will begin today on Snapdeal.com. The Dazen 1 is competing with the Redmi 2 smartphone, it is powered by 64 bit qualcomm snapdragon quad core processor and running Android KitKat out of the box.

Coolpad Dazen 1 unboxing
Inside the box you will find the Dazen 1 smartphone, user guide, warranty card, data cable, travel charger and 2500 mAh battery. Earphone is not included. SAR values are not mentioned.

Design, display and OS
On the first look the Dazen 1 will impress you. The Snow White colour and black combination with a good build quality gives a premium look and feel. Body is made of hard good quality plastic and the back panel with a matte finish feels really soft to touch.

Coolpad Dazen 1 box pack

Weight with battery is 156 grams and dimensions are 71.80 x 140.99 x 8.87 (mm). Power button is on the right, volume rocker on the left, audio jack on the top and micro USB port at the bottom.

This is a dual SIM handset you need two micro SIM’s. SIM slot 2 (that shows SIM 1 on the phone) supports 4G/3G/2G and SIM slot 1 supports 2G.

Coolpad Dazen 1 review and unboxing

This handset sports a 5 inch screen with 1280 x 720 pixels resolution. There is no mention about the screen protection, it does look like scratch resistant (minor extent), but better use a screen guard. Colour reproduction and viewing angles are good. Touch is smooth and responsive. The screen quality is like as seen on Micromax handset, good but you can see your / surrounding reflection on the screen when screen is on in auto mode, unless you manually increase the brightness.

There is LED notification and 3 sensors – accelerometer, light and proximity.

The Dazen 1 is running customized Android 4.4.4 out of the box.

Coolpad Dazen 1 review

Memory and Storage
There is a good 2GB RAM and 8GB storage. Of the 8GB storage you will get about 4.3GB free space and of the 2GB RAM about 1.4GB free RAM on the first boot. OTG is not supported but you can install apps on the external storage.

Performance
It houses the qualcomm snapdragon (MSM8916) 410 64 bit cortex A53 quad core processor clocked at 1.2GHz coupled with Adreno 306 GPU. Performance is smooth and handset does not heat up.

Benchmark

App Score
Quadrant 11084
Antutu (32 bit) 1st (20561), 2nd (20756)
Nenamark 2 52.0 fps
Multi touch 5 point

Gaming
I played asphalt 8 that got installed on the external storage. Game played well in medium visual quality mode though even in high mode it was playable with mild lag. There was some Gsensor calibration issues with no option to reset / fix that issue.

Camera
There is 8MP AF camera with LED flash on the rear and a 5MP FF camera on the front. Camera unfortunately is disappointing. Camera quality is good, if you look at the long shots but the main issue is with focusing. Most of the time it is not able to focus subjects properly resulting in blurry output.

Coolpad Dazen 1 hands on back

The camera is also not able to focus close objects that almost all handsets do. You need to move away a good distance from the subject to get a good focus. Check the sample images and videos at the end you will get an idea. Some shots are not focused properly and for some I moved way away to get a good shot.

Others
Sound is loud and clear. The handset supports 4G however I did not get the 4G signal, probably some network issue at my end. The OS is customized and looks really good. Multi screen is supported – you can work with 2 apps simultaneously in separate window. No issues found with Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth.

Battery
The removable battery of 2500 mAh capacity does a good job. You can expect about 5 to 7 hours of backup with moderate to heavy continuous usage.

Performance Time Battery drop % Battery Max Temp
Benchmark 12 Minutes 3% 34 degree
Gaming 27 Minutes 7% 34 degree
FHD movie play with full brightness + Wi-Fi on 21 minutes 5% 32 degree
Wall Charge (on standby) 1 hours 37 minutes 47% to 100% (charge) 30 degree

Verdict
Look wise and the 2GB RAM did left a very good impression and I though it could have been a worthy competitor to the Redmi 2 smartphone, unfortunately the screen and the camera quality does not really match up with Redmi 2. Even if you ignore the screen the camera is still pretty much disappointing.

Coolpad Dazen 1 is available for Rs. 6,999.

Image Gallery


Rear Camera Sample


Front Camera Sample

Coolpad Dazen 1 video review

By Rajeev Rana

Founder and Chief Editor - gogi.in