Chinese OEM Coolpad has made a name for itself with inexpensive 4G smartphones, notably including Legacy series models sold by T-Mobile’s prepaid Metro brand. Today, the company is using CES to unveil a Legacy 5G smartphone that will sell for under $400, and the specs might surprise you: It will include a larger screen, bigger battery, and two cameras with higher specs than Apple’s $999 iPhone 11 Pro.
The new phone begins with a 6.53-inch Full HD+ display that uses a relatively small V-notch to hold a 16-megapixel front-facing camera and continues to a pair of rear-facing cameras with 48- and 8-megapixel sensors. Running Android 10, the device will have a 4,000mAh battery and include both 5G connectivity and Bluetooth 5.0 — the latter with Tempow support for multi-device audio streaming.
Achieving the sub-$400 price point with solid hardware specs like these suggests the company is once again sourcing chips from MediaTek, which is today revealing the Dimensity 800 for 5G phones of this class. While Coolpad hasn’t provided details on its processor, the Dimensity 800 has an octa-core CPU with a four-core AI processor delivering 2.4 trillion operations per second. The 5G modem is likely to support only sub-6GHz networks, such as T-Mobile’s low band nationwide U.S. 5G network, rather than higher-speed millimeter wave connectivity.
Coolpad says the new phone will be available in the second quarter of 2020 as part of a “family of 5G devices” under the Legacy name. It will show the phone at CES alongside a $190 Dyno 2 Smartwatch targeted at kids, building on the 2019 original model’s clock, GPS tracking, and basic calling features with a new app platform. Dyno 2 is planned for release in April 2020.
Author: Jeremy Horwitz
Source: Venturebeat
