Coolpad Cool 12A First Impression: A Decent Entry Level Smartphone

Coolpad recently launched its new entry-level phone, the Coolpad Cool 12A in Nepal. It is the successor of the Coolpad Cool 10A.

Coolpad Cool 12A price in Nepal is Rs. 13,495 for the 3GB/32GB variant. With this phone, Coolpad is trying to provide an ultra value budget smartphone to Nepali consumers.

I got to spend some time with the Coolpad Cool 12A and this is my first impression. Let’s see if it is any good.

Coolpad Cool 12A Impressions

Design

• 157.7 x 75.3 x 8.9 mm
• 202.5g
• Dual Nano-SIM

The design of the Coolpad Cool 12A is eye-candy. The phone is made out of plastic but resembles a glass back with its shiny dual-tone pattern.

The phone is very slippery, so you may want to use it with a case.

On the back, there is a square camera bump and a Coolpad branding. Both power and volume buttons are placed on the right. And on the left, there is a triple-slot tray for a Dual Nano SIM card and a micro-SD card.

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Beneath the SIM tray, there is a fingerprint scanner. I would have preferred the fingerprint sensor on the power button itself, but instead, we get a separate space for it.

I don’t know why they decided to put the sensor on the other side, maybe to resemble the 5G antenna band of iPhone 12?

Display

• 6.217 inches IPS LCD Panel
• 720 x 1520 pixels

Coolpad Cool 12A comes with an HD+ LCD panel with a teardrop notch. Considering the price, the display does not disappoint.

The display is bright enough to be visible outdoor and the viewing angles are also great. The sharpness and the colors are decent enough for normal usage and media consumption.

Camera

• Rear Camera: 13MP
  • 0.3MP
  • Video: 1080p@30fps

• Front Camera: 5 MP

Inside the rear square camera bump, there are four circles comprising a single flashlight and what looks like three-camera lenses.

But don’t let those three camera lenses fool you. Only two camera lenses are real whereas the third one in there is a dummy.

When I reached out to the company, a spokesperson said the phone needs a software update for the camera to work.

Coolpad Cool 12A has a 13MP main camera and a 0.3MP secondary camera. The purpose of the secondary camera is not quite clear, and with my brief usage, I find it pretty useless.

Of course, I will be testing the photo and video quality in-depth in my full review, but for now, with the few sample pictures I took, here are my thoughts.

MAIN SENSOR

The photos taken from the main camera of the Coolpad Cool 12A are as expected from an entry-level smartphone.

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The photos are pretty soft, it lacks clarity. The dynamic range is also not that good. The shadows are underexposed and the highlights are overexposed. The overall colors also look quite flat. But, as I said, this is an entry-level phone, and the photos taken from the Cool 12A are okay for smartphones of this price range.

Maybe the day is not the best for its camera to shine, we will see that in the full review.

FRONT SENSOR

On the front side, there is a 5MP Selfie camera. It takes decent photos under good lighting conditions. Other than that, there is nothing special to talk about this camera either.

The details are missing, it looks very soft. But considering its price, we can’t complain much.

Performance

• Unisoc Tiger T310
• Quad-core (1×2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 & 3×1.8 GHz Cortex-A55)
• PowerVR GE8300 GPU
• 32GB 3GB RAM

The Coolpad Cool 12A is powered by a Unisoc Tiger T310 SoC. Unlike other chipsets in this price range, Unisoc Tiger T310 has a quad-core CPU instead of an octa-core CPU. But on the upside, it features a single ARM cortex A-75 performance CPU core.

This chipset features one Cortex-A75 core and three ARM Cortex-A55 cores. The A75 core is clocked at 2.0 GHz and the A55 cores are clocked at 1.8 GHz.

During my short usage, I found the performance of this phone to be good for the price. It smoothly handled normal UI, switching between multiple apps, and playing light games.

To know how the phone handles graphics-heavy apps such as PUBG and FreeFIre, I will be testing it in our full review.

Battery and Others

• Non-removable Li-Po 4000mAh battery
• 10W Charging

Coolpad Cool 12A comes with a 4000mAh battery and a 10W charger.

The battery capacity seems promising, it should last a day without any problem. We will find out as I test the phone for the full review.

The speaker in the device is the bottom-firing one. It gets very loud, and surprisingly clear as well. I mean—not that clear—but clear enough for a budget phone. One thing I noticed is that the speaker section gets warm when played at full volume for some period of time.

There’s another annoying thing I was constantly facing. When I tried to open any app for the first time, it just jumped straight to the home screen with a note saying “Missing required Phone permission, please apply for permission first.”

Follow Up

Coolpad Cool 12A is a decent option for someone looking for an entry-level smartphone.

The design is great, the display is also good enough with a decent speaker. But, we still need to test out its long-term performance.

This is my impression of the Coolpad Cool 12A. I will definitely be testing its full potential for the full review. Till then, stay tuned.

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What do you think about the Coolpad Cool 12A? If you have any questions or aspects of the device you want me to test for the full review, please let me know in the comments!

Also, watch our impressions of the OnePlus Nord 2 in Nepali.