Apart from Dazen 1, another smartphone Dazen X7 was launched by Coolpad in India. Dazen X7 is targeted to consumers in mid range price segment. Coolpad Group Limited was founded in 1993 and deals with integrated solutions for smartphones, mobile data platform systems and value-added business operations in China.
Today we will be reviewing Coolpad Dazen X7 which is a mid range smartphone. This review is based on our experience with the device for last one week as primary device.
Brief Specifications
- 13.2cm (5.2) AMOLED FHD Display
- 1.7 GHz Octa Core Mediatek Processor
- 13 MP Rear Camera & 8 MP Front Camera
- 2 GB RAM & 16 GB ROM
- 2700 mAh Li-ion Battery
- Android 4.4.2 KitKat
Design, Hardware and Build Quality
In terms of design and build quality, it sports a metallic body with non removable back cover with glass which often makes it too slippery to hold. Even though the build appears a bit of premium, the design is nothing spectacular or something exceptional. The Power button and Volume rockers are placed on the two sides just like most smartphones along with 3.5 mm audio jack at the top side and micro USB port at bottom placed at middle. The speakers are placed at the bottom right side of the micro USB port which is good and gives you clear sound irrespective of the way you place your smartphone on any flat surface. The left side too comes with slots similar to speakers, we are not sure why they made it as speakers are not there. May be just to make both sides look identical.
The Menu buttons are on screen buttons at the bottom instead of hardware buttons. Apart from the conventional three menu buttons, a fourth button is also present which is basically the full screen button which on clicking, hides all the menu buttons giving you a bigger screen. You can get back the menu buttons again by swiping up from the bottom screen. It is a good feature in some situations when you want a bigger screen, but it can be an annoyance sometimes too as you need one more step to get back menu buttons.
The back camera with flash is not integrated seamlessly but protruded a bit. It would have looked better if Coolpad designers were able to fit the camera without protruding it out.
Dazen X7 is powered by 1.7 GHz Octa Core Mediatek MT6595 Processor with PowerVR Rogue G6200 GPU along with 2 GB of RAM giving it great power to run smoothly.
It comes with accelerometer, light, gyro, e-compass, orientation, gravity & proximity sensors.
Second SIM slot / SD card slot can either be used for second SIM or Micro SD card. BUt you can only use one option which limits your choices if you want to use dual SIMs and also a micro SD card.
Picture Gallery
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Display
Dazen X7 sports a 5.2 inch AMOLED FHD display with a corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection and 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution with a pixel density of 423 ppi. The display appears crisp and crystal clear with good Colour reproduction in normal lighting conditions and even in sunlight. The viewing angles are good and we didn’t face any issues in terms of the same during our review period.
Performance, Gaming and Benchmarks
During our review period of one week, we didn’t encounter any issues like lags in the UI or any other problem which hangs up the smartphone. Everything worked great without any issues, except there was some issue with the CoolUI Photos app as it’s UI was lagging often but except that app everything was smooth
We played some heavy games on it such as Asphalt. As you Asphalt 8 is a graphics intensive game, ran smoothly on the device with highest graphics option. The graphics display and colour reproduction was great.
In terms of Benchmark scores, it came out with a score of 43,600+ score which is great and compares well with other devices in similar price range such as one plus one. You can checkout other benchmark scores and other details in the screenshots attached with this post later on.
Dazen X7 also supports USB OTG devices and you can use any external flash drive to connect to it without worrying about storage. So apart from using your micro Sd card as added storage, you can use a flash drive to watch videos, listen to music and what not.
The sound from speakers are loud and clear.
Heating Issues
The only problem that we faced during gaming is the usual heating issue. The heating in this case though was much more than we expected and Coolpad needs to fix it with a software update otherwise it becomes intolerable to play the games on the device after few minutes as the device gets too heated for you to even hold it properly.
Apart from games, we face heating issue with some other normal operation. The smartphone was getting heated up even during normal smartphone usage such as using camera, listening songs, watching videos etc. for few minutes.
Hopefully Coolpad will fix these heating issues with a firmware update soon.
Camera
Coolpad Dazen comes with a 13 MP main rear camera with LED flash and 8 MP front shooter. We used both the cameras for almost a week shooting images in different lighting conditions. To be honest, we are impressed by the picture quality of both the cameras even if you consider the price of the device. The cameras were able to shoot great pictures in varying light conditions and the quality of images were better than any camera we have tested in this mid-level price range.
One of the features that came with both cameras is the Pro mode which was very easy to use instead of some complicated Pro Mode in many other smartphones.
You can check out the camera samples of Coolpad Dazen X7 below.
Camera samples
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Battery
The device is powered by a 2700 mAh Li-Polymer removable battery. In terms of battery life, it impressed us. We were able to get a better battery life compared to any other expensive smartphone or any other device in same price range. Even with heavy usage, it lasted for more than a day. For normal usage, it even lasted for almost two full days and I had to charge it only on second night.
The battery performance during idle time was excellent as we observed with Dazen 1 and it didn’t lose more than 1-2% in terms of battery life even after many hours of not using it. Most other devices lose around 5-15% of battery during idle time of few hours.
During our testing though, only once we experienced an abrupt battery behaviour when battery dropped instantly to zero from 20-30% while using the camera for 4-5 shots.
Operating System and UI
As I keep saying, I always prefer stock Android with stock launcher when it comes to operating system on any smartphone. We were unable to find a option to change the default launcher to a launcher similar to stock owith an app drawer, unless you install a new launcher app like Apex or Nova launcher.
Coolpad Dazen X7 is powered by Android 4.4.4 Kitkat operating system with Cool UI 6. Even though the CoolUI appears a clean UI and looks good to our eyes, it brings some design issues along with it.
One of the annoyances that we faced ( even with Dazen 1) is related to the basic notification centre which can be accessed by swiping from the top screen. The Notification centre clubs all the notification (even if it’s just one notification) into a single notification with says ” 1 or 2 or 3 or… other notifications”. Unless you click on that message, you can not access those notifications. The stock Android behaviour for notifications is better in terms of user behaviour and it should be followed.
Similarly, the UI for dialling calls by searching contacts is a bit difficult. Basically, in many apps or even system UI you need to do an extra click here and there to do different actions.
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Some of the apps like “Photos” though is much better and comes with good features / options for editing photos captured by camera. Similarly it comes with some great options under “Coolshow ” app which lets you customise / change settings for wallpapers of home & lock screens, Incoming calls, alarm tones, themes, lock screen styles and more.
Dazen X7 comes with smart gestures which lets you customise gesture to control different functions of the smartphone such as opening a particular app by typing an alphabet on the blank screen of the device. These options are disabled by default but you can enable them easily in settings.
Similarly you can change to a different wallpaper on home screen just by pressing an icon on the home screen.
Conclusion
In short, we found out Coolpad Dazen X7 performed great in almost all aspects including good cameras & good battery. But the heating issues, a bit of CoolUI issues and pricing may pose a detterent for users. The competition in this mid segment is tough with Xiaomi Mi4i priced at just Rs 12,999. If Coolpad fixed those issues and had priced the device better, it would have proved to be serious competition to other devices in mid range price segment.
