Even as the Chinese smartphone market has been showing signs of a slowdown over the past year, the country still remains the world’s largest handset market ahead of the U.S. That being the case, many companies apparently still believe that there’s enough room for new brands to grow profitably in a market that is already teeming with hundreds of vendors selling their products at razor thin margins, thanks to immense competition. Now, it’s the turn of an all-new brand from two established companies to make an appearance in the country’s crowded smartphone sector. ‘Cool’, which is the result of a collaboration between Coolpad and LeEco, is now officially the newest smartphone brand to hit the country.
The first-ever ‘Cool’ smartphone, Cool1 Dual, was announced earlier today in China. Although the handset was earlier rumored to come with a QHD screen and a Snapdragon 820 SoC, in reality, it packs much more humble hardware underneath its hood. The device comes with a dual 13-megapixel camera setup on the rear, which is the headline feature of the handset. As for the rest of the tech specs, the device features a 5.5-inch 1080p in-cell display panel with 450nits brightness and 72% NTSC color gamut. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 SoC that comes with an octa-core CPU clocked at a maximum of 1.8GHz and an Adreno 510 GPU. The device will be offered in three different RAM and storage configurations, and while the base version will come with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, the top-end model will have 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. There will also be a variant that will have 4GB of RAM but only 32GB of built-in storage.
As mentioned earlier already, imaging options will include the dual 13-megapixel rear cameras with dual-tone LED flash, f/2.0 aperture, Phase Detection Auto-Focus (PDAF) and 4K video recording. The front camera, meanwhile, will be an 8-megapixel unit with an f/2.2 aperture and an 80-degree wide-angle lens. The Cool1 will have support for VoLTE (Voice-over-LTE), while other connectivity features will include WiFi 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n (2.4/5 GHz), Bluetooth 4.1, GPS and USB Type C. The device will have dual nano SIM slots and a 4,060 mAh battery with support for fast charging, while Android 6.0 Marshmallow will be pre-installed with an EUI 5.6 overlay.
The Cool1 is already up for pre-order from a number of online sources in China, including the Coolpad website, LeMall and JD.com. It will formally go on sale from the 24th of this month. The device is available in three color options, including Gold, Silver and Rose Gold, and has been priced at 1099 yuan ($166) for the base 3GB / 32GB model. The two 4GB models cost 1,499 Yuan ($226) and 1,699 Yuan ($256) respectively for the 32GB and the 64GB versions.
