Does Coolpad Cool Play 6 Justify Its Tagline of a Gaming Smartphone? [REVIEW]

Coolpad Cool Play 6 is the newest smartphone by Coolpad. Though this phone was released in the international market a long time ago, this phone made its way to the Nepali market last month. The Coolpad Cool 1 was one of the most successful smartphones from Coolpad and now they have released the Coolpad Coolplay 6 which is probably going to replace the Cool 1.

I tested the Coolpad Cool Play 6 for a week and here is my review about what this device is like, its performance and its value.

Coolpad Cool Play 6 Review

DESIGN

Starting off with the design, this phone has a sleek metallic design with plastic on top and bottom, where the antennae bands lie. But that sleek look comes with a downside. This phone easily catches smudges from your fingers and the device looks dirty. On top of that, the device is slippery. It’s metallic build surely makes the device feel premium in the hand but it often slips out of your hand. So, I would suggest getting a case for this device. The front of this device does not have any gimmicky “2.5D Curved Glass” or 18:9 bezel-less display. It just a plain glass with regular bezels on top and bottom.

The speakers on this device, meh, well are not very good. It has a bottom firing speaker which can very well be covered by your hands while playing games and watching videos. Coolpad could have used the earpiece as another speaker which would make a great stereo speaker. Come on Coolpad, it’s already there. Use it.

As for the ports, Coolplay 6 has a headphone jack, which is difficult to find in smartphones nowadays. Unlike some of the phones like J7 Pro and Nova 2i, this device has a USB Type C port under this price category. Unfortunately, you don’t get a microSD card slot, so you are limited to the base storage of 64 Gigabytes. Talking about the fingerprint sensor on the Cool Play 6, it is a rear-mounted fingerprint and is surprisingly fast.

HARDWARE

Now, moving on to the specs. It has a Snapdragon 653 chipset with an Octa-Core processor and Adreno 510 GPU. Backing this up, is 6 gigabytes of RAM. This looks great on paper. Even though Coolpad advertises this phone as “Gaming Smartphone” but the real-world usage is not that great. At least not as great as Coolpad portrays to be.

I tested few games with this phone, PUBG, Asphalt 8 and WWE Immortals. They do run fairly well but I experienced frequent stutters during the game. While running PUBG even in low graphics settings, I experienced a great deal of lag and frame drops and same with Asphalt 8.

The major concern with this device is that it heats up a lot. Even with half an hour of gaming, this device got pretty hot and was uncomfortable to hold. I was surprised by some reviewers statement that it’s a minor issue but it’s a major issue even for casual gamers.

SCREEN

The screen on this device is a 5.5 inch IPS capacitive touchscreen which boasts a whopping 16 million colors. The resolution was nothing over the top: 1920 by 1080 pixels. As mentioned earlier, it is not an 18:9 aspect ratio display. The thick bezels on top and bottom are prominent but I don’t think it causes it to look ugly.

A 1080p display on a 5.5-inch screen is not bad because it has a relatively good pixel density of 401 pixels per inch. The screen on this device got pretty bright but it’s sometimes difficult t see the screen in direct sunlight. Other than that, despite being an LCD panel, this screen was not bad to look at.

CAMERA

The camera on this device is great. On paper. But in the real world usage, I did not find it to be as impressive. You get a dual camera setup. Both of which are 13-megapixel sensors. But the camera quality is not as good as Coolpad portrays it to be. The camera on this phone lacks the dynamic range. The backgrounds that are not in focus and look blown out without much of a detail. However, the color is pretty accurate and the contrast is good enough.

The other appealing feature about the camera on this device is that it has an SLR more. This is where you can manually adjust the aperture. The aperture can go from f/0.95 to f/16. Well, this is not the physical movement like that of the Samsung Galaxy S9, but is a software simulation using the dual camera setup. You also get a full-on “Pro Mode” where you can mess with the settings like the shutter speed, exposure, ISO and color contrast.

Moving onto the video, this phone captures videos all the way from 720p to 4K. With the dual camera setup, you can expect pretty good videos out of this phone and well, it doesn’t disappoint us. However, there are a few problems with the videos. First one is that it doesn’t have optical image stabilization and the videos look shaky. The other one is the auto-focus. Even with a dual sensor, this camera has a hard time focusing the subjects in videos.

Photo Samples

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BATTERY

Talking about the battery, it’s probably the best thing about this phone. It. Is. Freaking. Amazing. It has a 4000 mAh battery which gives you well over 10 hours of screen on time. For me, this device lasted for almost a day and a half. But the downside to having such a humongous battery is that it takes absolutely ages to fully charge. It took me just over 2 and a half hours to fully charge this device from 0% battery. And well, it doesn’t have fast charging, so that’s a bummer.

Coolpad Cool Play 6 Key Specification

Display: 5.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen
Resolution: 1080×1920 pixels (~401 PPI pixel density)
Chipset: Qualcomm MSM8976 Pro Snapdragon 653
CPU: Octa-core (4×1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A72)
GPU: Adreno 510
OS: Android 7.1.1 (Nougat)
Memory: 6 GB RAM, 64 GB ROM
Primary Camera: Dual 13 MP, f/2.0
Secondary Camera: 8 MP, f/2.2
Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 4060 mAh battery

Coolpad Cool Play 6 Price in Nepal: Rs. 31,996

Coolpad Cool Play 6 in Photos

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VERDICT

Alright, I don’t know what other people think of Coolpad, but I think this company has a great potential. But, it is at least that one minor detail that causes Coolpad phone to fail. Same with the Coolpad Coolplay 6. This is a great phone, there is no doubt about that. But this time “that one minor detail” is the pricing, which doesn’t seem so “minor” now, does it?

If this smartphone completely resonates with the idea of your perfect smartphone, then go for it. But I wouldn’t exactly recommend buying this device. Not because this device is bad or anything but because there are a lot better options for the price you pay. One of them is the Huawei Nova 2i and the other could be the J7 pro.

However the performance is better on the Cool Play 6, but when it comes to the optimization and the user experience, Coolpad is far behind in my opinion. I was expecting too much out of the Cool Play 6 regarding performance and it has me disappointed. And it’s because the performance is not as good as marketed. I mean it’s a Gaming Phone, Right?