Chinese manufacturer Coolpad has launched its budget smartphone dubbed the Dazen 1 in India at Rs. 6,999. It will be the first smartphone by the company to get manufactured in India at Aurangabad “very soon”, said Coolpad’s India Head Varun Sharma during the launch event in New Delhi on Thursday.
Design and feel of the Dazen 1 reminds us of Huwaei’s Honor Holly and one common factor between both smartphone is that both have highly reflective display upfront. The Coolpad Dazen 1 features a 5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) IPS display which is a fingerprint magnet. We had trouble looking at the display even in an indoor light setup.
Other than that, the smartphone fits and feel quite decent in hand. Back of it is made of polycarbonate and has got a nice and smooth matte finish. Coolpad at the time of launch compared it to Xiaomi Redmi 2, but we would rather suggest you Redmi 2 at this point and you can wait for our final review of the Dazen 1.
In comparison to Redmi 2, the Coolpad Dazen 1 is also powered by a 64-bit 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor but has a 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB. It runs on Android 4.4.2 Kitkat with company’s own custom CoolUI 6 skin on top. The UI looks and feels quite similar to Xiaomi’s MIUI, as we already mentioned in our Coolpad Dazen X7 hands on.
At the back, the Dazen 1 packs an 8-megapixel camera LED flash and there is a front 5-megapixel camera also on-board. The handset includes 8GB of inbuilt storage, which is expandable via microSD card (up to 32GB).
The three capacitive touch buttons sits below the display. Right side of the smartphone includes power/ lock key. The volume rocker key is located on the left edge, 3.5mm headphones jack is at the top, and Micro-USB/ data transfer port is on the bottom edge.
Connectivity options on the Coolpad Dazen 1 include 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS/ A-GPS, Bluetooth 4.0 and FM radio. The handset is backed by a 2500mAh removable battery, which is rated to deliver up to 200 hours of standby time.