Coolpad's Stock Android Smartphones Target T-Mobile, Sprint

LAS VEGAS—Coolpad may only have one phone out in the U.S., but it's now the tenth-largest phone maker in the world, bigger than HTC, Motorola, or BlackBerry, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

The firm, which only makes smartphones, is just getting started here, and it has expertise that may make it critical to T-Mobile and Sprint. One of the company's specialties is combining network modes, and with its new Coolpad 8920, it's one of the first phone makers to build devices with TD-LTE and FD-LTE, needed for Sprint's new tri-band LTE solution.

Coolpad's single U.S. customer so far, MetroPCS, has also just pivoted. Since it was bought by T-Mobile, the carrier has tossed out its CDMA phone roadmap and is auditioning new GSM/LTE devices to run on T-Mobile's HSPA+ and LTE networks under the MetroPCS brand. Coolpad is fully in the mix there, said Ed Petersen, marketing director for Coolpad Americas.

"Metro has actually been a very big advocate for us as we're starting to look at T-Mobile and bringing GSM-based products into T-Mobile. We've also received some very high accolades from the T-Mobile test lab," said Charlie Parke, Coolpad's senior director of business development.

Coolpad's Quattro 4G for MetroPCS didn't get a great review here at PCMag because we found it sluggish. Petersen defended it gamely, saying MetroPCS gradually moved the price from $149 down to $79 and has sold almost 900,000 devices.

"The user experience was phenomenal. We also had to hit a price point on that device, but we learned a tremendous amount from that. The return rate was one of the best at Metro, our rate of repair was one of the best, so really, really good things emerged from that," he said.

The Quattro also passed T-Mobile's test labs and works with an update that lets MetroPCS customers roam on T-Mobile's faster LTE network in Las Vegas, Petersen said. That will give Quattro users speeds up to 20Mbps down.

"How does that position us for T-Mobile? That positions us very well," he said.

So far, Sprint has said that LG and Samsung phones are coming to its tri-band network, while it hasn't said anything about Coolpad. But the phone maker is clearly lining up other customers as well—as I entered Coolpad's suite, an entire crew from Tracfone was on their way out.

Hands-On With The Quattro II Coolpad is also coming back with the Quattro II, which is coming to C Spire in July; I got a little hands-on time here at CTIA. Running close to stock Android 4.1.2 (Coolpad doesn't interfere with it, but the carriers can) the Quattro II has the same 1.2-GHz Qualcomm MSM8930 dual-core processor you see in MetroPCS's LG Sprit 4G, as well as a much brighter, peppier 4.5-inch 960-by-540 TFT LCD screen than the original Quattro. There's a 5-megapixel camera on the back and a VGA camera on the front.

At 5.2 by 2.6 by 0.43 inches, it isn't a super-thin phone. But it feels fine to hold, is decently built, and not too large. The back is textured for grippiness. Like the Quattro (and, for that matter, the LG Motion 4G before it) the Quattro II clearly isn't going up against design legends like the iPhone or HTC One, but it will probably come in with decent performance at a lower price point.

Coolpad had some of its Chinese phones on hand to show that it too can do design, though. The Coolpad 8720, out in China, has a more striking and sharply rectangular design with a 5-inch, 1,280-by-720 screen, and it's just 0.35 inches thick. Maybe still not HTC build quality, but it felt less generic. The Coolpad 7268 showed off Coolpad's tight relationship with Qualcomm, using the new quad-core Cortex-A5 MSM8225Q processor in a $160 phone.

Staying Focused for Success Coolpad isn't the only Chinese handset maker to hit the U.S. market recently. Huawei and ZTE, both much larger, are now delivering full lineups to U.S. carriers. But Coolpad aims to make money by staying focused.

"We have a laser focus. We just do smartphones, we don't do anything else," Petersen said. It's always been that way—Coolpad started as a successful PDA maker before pivoting, and it sold 26 million smartphones last year, he said.

Many PCMag readers will also be heartened by Coolpad's focus on stock Android—not because it doesn't have the resources to write its own software, but because it thinks Americans want it. In China, Coolpad's Android phones are heavily skinned, with software like "Cool Cloud" and "Cool Life" installed. Not so here.

"We're going to get as close to vanilla stock Android as we're allowed to by our carrier partners," Petersen said. "We believe that there's a real pent-up demand for those devices and I think as OEMs we tend to clutter up Android with their own skins, they really complicate the upgrade cycle, and they really complicate people's ability to transition from one OEM to the next. Our mindset is to launch with stock Android as far as possible."