Will T-Mobile's Coolpad Defiant defy your expectations for a budget phone? No.

by Luis D. / Apr 25, 2017, 8:00 AM

Will T-Mobile's Coolpad Defiant defy your expectations for a budget phone? No.

Giving the people what they want – affordable stuff that generally works – T-Mobile is gearing up to launch a budget handset for the smallest of budgets. The Coolpad Defiant will not defy your expectations for an entry-level handset, but can be just the backup phone you're looking for in times of peril. However, T-Mo will have to price it really low if it wants to present it as a compelling offer.

That's because the Defiant works on hardware we have long moved on from. Its 5-inch display has the grainy resolution of 480 x 854; the processor is a modest Snapdragon chipset with 1GB RAM, and the storage space is a puny 8GB. There's a 5MP camera on the rear and a 2MP cam up front. The phone runs Android Nougat, which Google should consider congratulatory – Android is finally lean enough to work proper on low-end hardware.

In an era where a phone like the Alcatel A30 can be had for $99, the Defiant appears wholly obsolete. But if T-Mobile wants to sell it, there's probably a market for it. At least the Defiant has a cooler name than 99% of electronic devices out there. T-Mobile boss and rockstar CEO John Legere must be giddy about it.

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source: Android Authority via Android Headlines

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4 Comments

1. SleeperOne

Posts: 370; Member since: Feb 25, 2017

Uh, Android 7.0 is hardly low-end specs friendly, and Marshmallow could run on a toy like the Alcatel Lume/Pixi Unite just fine. Coolpad at least offers decent build quality, as evident with the Catalyst.

posted on Apr 25, 2017, 8:10 AM 0

2. SleeperOne

There's always a market for the very bottom of the barrel non-enthusiast smartphone, don't kid yourselves...

posted on Apr 25, 2017, 9:29 AM 0

3. LyannaStark

Posts: 91; Member since: Apr 07, 2017

Are you kidding? Coolpad is a joke, the build quality on the phones is horrible.

posted on Apr 25, 2017, 11:22 AM 0

4. luis.d

Posts: 354; Member since: Dec 04, 2013

@Sleeper We have seen what I think is an unusual amount of cheapie phones shipping with Nougat this year. Running the latest Android on budget models has hardly been an incentive for phone makers until now, and I suspect performance has something to do with this tendency. Of course, I haven't seen how the Defiant runs Nougat personally, but I'd trust T-Mobile not to sell a phone with an objectively inadequate user experience.