Another Chinese company Coolpad is also known for its race in the budget segment. Now the company has tried to challenge Xiaomi’s new offering by launching Mega 2.5D. Currently this phone is available only through flash sales. 2.5D is a selfie focused smartphone in which special attention has been given to the design. It seems to be a big competitor for Redmi 3S but we feel that Mega 2.5D is a great alternative for those who want a phone with a big 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 build
The Mega 2.5D is definitely a great looking smartphone. And it looks stunning in the gold colour variant. We can see that Coolpad has paid a lot of attention to the design of this phone. 2.5D, as the name suggests, has a curved display on the top. The display has black bezels on the sides, which gives the illusion of an edge-to-edge panel when the screen is off.
The phone has a 5.5-inch display that comes with HD resolution. This screen is quite common in this segment. However, the pixel density is low as per the size of the display, which leads to blurring around the text. It is not great but it is okay. There is a notification LED at the top and onscreen navigation buttons.
The Coolpad Mega 2.5D is not very user friendly as it is impossible to use it with one hand. Fortunately, it is not too heavy and weighs just 143 grams. The phone is also quite slim. The phone has a metal frame but the rear is made of plastic. Apart from the screen, the entire phone is fingerprint-free which makes it easy to clean. The buttons respond well.
The phone has a hybrid SIM tray on the right side while the 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. There is a camera module on the top on the rear and a speaker on the bottom. The problem with having a round rear is that it completely blocks the speaker when it is 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 phone looks beautiful and is well made. There is no fingerprint sensor in the phone but at this price, it is okay to not have it.
Specifications and software
The Coolpad Mega 2.5D is powered by a MediaTek MT6735P quad-core processor which is not the best choice these days at this price point. The phone could have been powered by any other budget chipset from Qualcomm (Snapdragon 410). Coolpad has also packed 3GB of RAM in the phone which is unheard of in this price range. However, the extra RAM does not improve the performance of the phone and it does affect the benchmark results. We got very low numbers from the phone in our 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.
Running on Android Marshmallow, the phone comes with Coolpad’s unknown CoolUI 8.0 skin. We think it needs a lot of improvement and changes. Swiping up from the bottom brings up the Control Center which offers brightness controls, app shortcuts and toggle switches for customization.
The C button on the phone is similar to Xiaomi’s Quick Ball, which gives you a floating circular overlay that resides on the edge of the display. Pressing and holding it opens up a cursory list of shortcuts.
There are a few UI design options that we think 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 is no quick way to control the music player from the home screen. The theme app provided in the phone is also quite useless and the options are very limited and you may not even like the themes you get.
Apart from this, the phone has a ‘Transfer’ app for transferring data from one phone to another, Cool Manager for blocking calls, managing data traffic and locking apps.
Performance
The display performance is very good and the colour reproduction is good. The phone is readable in sunlight but the ambient light sensor is a bit slow and it responds slowly at times. The touch response on the display is not good at times and the phone does not respond. The call quality is good but the speaker volume is quite low during calls. The phone works well most of the time although the rear and display camera get heated up during use. We tested it with two different units of the Coolpad Mega 2.5D and both gave the same response.
CoolUI 8 looks great at first glance but after installing a few apps and games, the performance is not very good. Whether you are unlocking the device or switching to another app, you get a sporadic shutter in the phone. The heavy skin on the phone is paired with a weak processor, so even 3GB of RAM can’t do much in the phone.
Apart from this, the Zumei weather notification and headphone jack alert in the phone are also annoying which cannot be removed. And the notification shade gets filled with it. Apart from this, another drawback that we noticed is the GPS icon constantly flashing. 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 videos can be played in Mega 2.5D but the audio performance is quite poor due to the speakers. The audio quality is good with the headset that comes with the phone. The phone has a custom music player called CoolMusic and it is functional. There are several equalizers built in to tweak the music.
The phone has 10 megapixel front and rear cameras and both give average results. The camera app is simple and easy to use. You can swipe up or down to switch between shooting modes like video, beauty, night and pro. Focus speed is slow and due to shutter issues, you have to keep the camera steady to take good pictures. Macro pictures come with good detailing.
Landscape shots have less detailing and objects look a bit ugly 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 at a maximum of 720 pixels but this too is useful only in good light. Talking about being a selfie phone, the camera app lacks features like gestures or voice capture. The phone has a beauty mode with several 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 lasted for 8 hours and 27 minutes which is not bad. However, with normal use, with two SIMs active, we could only manage 17-18 hours before the battery started to show signs of draining. The battery lasts the same with a single SIM as well. Coolpad has provided a standby power saving option which turns the stock launcher into a basic launcher and you can only message and call. However, we don’t understand why Coolpad didn’t provide a bigger battery in this phone. Looking at the size of the phone, we were expecting a 4000mAh battery.
Our verdict
The Coolpad Mega 2.5D smartphone looks like a good phone at first glance but after using it for a week, we were a bit disappointed. This phone could have been a good alternative to the Redmi 3S and it is a big screen phone. But the poor choice of components makes it lag behind the Redmi 3S.
We are especially talking about its chipset and battery. Both of these spoil the phone experience. The heavy skin on Marshmallow is also not good and due to the weak processor, it causes a lot of problems. Camera and battery are two such places where 2.5D gets stuck.
The design of the phone is probably the only thing that makes a phone good but you can’t buy a phone based on its looks alone. We hope to see an upgraded variant of the Mega 2.5D with a more powerful and new CPU, bigger battery and a more optimized interface to make it a good phone at this price.
Right now, the Xiaomi Redmi 3S is the best phone in this category, followed by the Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus (Review).
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