After impressing with Note 3 and its variants, Coolpad has come up with a big-screen smartphone called the Mega 2.5D. Priced at Rs.6,999, it faces direct competition from the Redmi 3S, also selling at the same price.
Plastic vs metal
Coolpad Mega 2.5D has a a plastic body. You can take off the back panel as most plastic-based smartphones allow users to remove the back. The card slots are placed along the side panel. It is also a little taller (153mm high and 76.8mm wide) compared to the metal clad Redmi 3S, which is 139.3mm long and 69.6mm wide. Despite the big size, the Mega 2.5D weighs only 140g and is slightly lighter than the Redmi 3S’s 143g form. This makes the former one of the lightest big-screen phones in the market. There is no fingerprint sensor in either of them.
Battle of screen sizes
While the Coolpad Mega 2.5D has a 5.5-inch display, it has a resolution of 1280x720p only, which means a lower pixel density of 234ppi. The Redmi 3S offers 1280x720p resolution but on a smaller 5-inch display, resulting in better pixel density of 294ppi. This means the Redmi 3S is more likely to have a sharper looking screen, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it has a better display.
The common point
The Coolpad Mega 2.5D runs on the latest available (Marshmallow) version of Android with their proprietary Cool UI 8.0 on top of it. This puts it on par with the Redmi 3S which also runs Android Marshmallow with its own MIUI 7.5.
Setting new benchmarks
Coolpad has used MediaTek’s 64-bit MT6735P quad-core processor and paired it with 3GB RAM. This makes it one of the few smartphones in this price range which offers that much of RAM. The Redmi 3S runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor with 2GB RAM. In terms of storage, the Coolpad Mega 2.5D provides 16GB of on-board storage and can accommodate up to 32GB of microSD card. The SD card is built within the SIM card slot which means you can use one SIM or a microSD card at a time or two SIM cards and no microSD card.
The Redmi 3S also comes with 16GB of internal storage but can take in up to 128GB of micro SD cards. It uses the same hybrid SIM mechanism that we saw in the Mega 2.5D.
The Achilles heel?
The Mega 2.5D is powered by a 2,500mAh battery which gives the Redmi 3S an upper hand as it has a 4,100mAh battery. While the real-world performance can be surprising, the difference on paper is massive.
For selfie fans
Given the selfie craze, Coolpad has used 8-megapixel cameras in both the rear and front panels. The rear camera is accompanied with LED flash. The Redmi 3S has a 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, phase detection auto focus and a 5-megapixel front camera.
