After an extended romance with e-commerce companies, smartphone OEMs are looking at the offline market. While no OEM will ever accept it, online giants in India just do not have the reach needed for a country like India yet. The offline space is huge, and the next billion smartphone users are in tier II and tier III cities. So, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Samsung or Xiaomi, you need to hit the offline stores eventually.
That’s exactly what makes phones like the Lenovo K6 Note and Coolpad Cool 1 interesting. They’re both available offline, and they sport specifications that “disruptive” online-only phones have been known for. to make the competition even clearer, both phones have 3GB of RAM, 32GB storage, 4000 mAh batteries (4060mAh on the Cool 1), and are priced at Rs. 13,999. They differ in the camera and performance departments, with the K6 Note running on a Snapdragon 430 SoC, against the Cool 1's Snapdragon 652. While we will get to the camera in time, here's a comparison of how these compare in terms of speed and regular SoC performance.
Speed
The Coolpad Cool 1 is the runaway winner as far as speed is concerned. And that was quite expected to be honest. The Snapdragon 652 is almost twice as fast as the Snapdragon 430, and that shows. On regular usage, with things like social networking and emails, there’s a sluggish appeal about the Lenovo K6 Note. In comparison, the Coolpad Cool 1 is what we call snappy, and fast.
To explain a simple use case, the Lenovo K6 Note takes a good two seconds longer to launch the camera app and focus on a subject. Where the Coolpad Cool 1 takes a total of 2.35 seconds, the K6 Note takes almost 4 seconds to complete the given task. Similarly, games load faster, as do simpler apps like Facebook and Twitter. When switching apps, the Coolpad Cool 1 handles the transitions faster, too.
Heat
Interestingly, both the phones show similar performance on heat tests as well. With the outside temperature at around 13 degrees celsius, both the Lenovo K6 Note and Coolpad Cool 1 top out at 37 degree temperatures on their bodies, after 15 minutes of gaming. Since the Lenovo K6 Note can’t shoot 4K videos, we couldn’t use our video test on this one.
However, on shooting 1080p videos, both the phones reach the 32 degree mark. To be precise, the Coolpad Cool 1 registered readings of 33.2 degrees, while the Lenovo K6 Note registered readings of 35.3 degrees. Ideally, 4K video recording is much more taxing on the SoC, but since the Lenovo device isn't capable of the same, at least natively, that automatically puts it at a disadvantage any way.
Bottomline
From a performance perspective, the Coolpad Cool 1 is definitely the faster and more efficient smartphone amongst the two. It is noticeably faster than the Lenovo K6 Note, and given its impressive heat readings, it comes out as more efficient as well. In fact, having reviewed the Coolpad Cool 1, we can attest to its battery life as well. The Lenovo K6 Note is under review right now, but given its performance, the camera and battery will have a lot to make up for.
Buy Lenovo K6 Note at Rs. 17,450 on amazon
Buy Coolpad Cool 1 at Rs.13,999 on amazon