Monsters from Asia: the Coolpad Note 5 is easily the most affordable 4GB RAM phone we've ever seen

One of the fairly large yet mostly unknown China-based smartphone makers, Coolpad, might have just redefined what we regard as exceptional value for money, or as we like to call it, top-notch 'bounce for the ounce'. Introducing the Coolpad Note 5, a device that was just announced and definitely lowers the pricing bar as low as possible. How low exactly? Well, we know for a fact that it will hardly ever be available in the West or the USA for that matter, but the phone will start at Rs 10,999 in India and will be exclusively available on Amazon India. How much is that in dollarydoos? Well, that'd be $165!

So, what do you get for that price? First of all, you get a metal phone that reminds us of Xiaomi's Redmi Note 3 design-wise, and is definitely intended as a rival to that one, all things considered. There's a fingerprint scanner at the back, as well as a rear-blasting loudspeaker - nothing exciting going on in the design department. Initially, the phone will come in two color versions - Royal Gold and Space Gray ones.

Hardware-wise, the true highlight of the phone are the 4 gigs of RAM we already mentioned. There's a Snapdragon 617 also running the show, as well as 32 gigs of native storage, but thanks to the hybrid SIM card slot it has, the Note 5 lets you either throw in a microSD card inside or another nanoSIM card. Oh, and did we mention that the phone boasts a 5.5-inch full HD, IPS LCD display? Well, it does. 

Additionally, the Indian equivalent of $165 gets us a 13MP rear camera with an f/2.2 aperture, a dual LED flash, and a 5-element lens.The 8MP selfie snapper at the front also features an f/2.2 aperture and has an LED flash sidekick as well. 

At the back, we find a large 4,010mAh battery that will probably keep the lights on for more than a day. Finally, we've got Android Marshmallow with Coolpad's own CoolUI 8.0 on top running the whole show.