In December 2019, a few months after our Huawei Union smartphone died and we replaced it with the LG Tribute Empire, my dad’s phone, the ZTE Speed, also gave up the ghost. It blinked out one day and never powered on again. Thus began our second search for a new phone.
We settled on the Coolpad Legacy Go (CLG) in January 2020. I had previously rejected the CLG because of its unknown brand name and low ratings, but at $25—slightly less with a 20% off coupon code—it was the only phone that fit into our budget.
I’d crossed my fingers that the CLG would turn out okay. But nope. There were problems straight out the box, and the experience continued to go up and down from there.
Unboxing & Setup
Like usual, the Coolpad Legacy Go shipped in a slightly heavy brown box. The Boost Mobile box lay inside, cradled by a pair of those green shipping balloons. Irritatingly, there was no perforated tab on the box to make it easier to open, so I had to cut across the top with a razor.
A smaller white box bearing the dark-blue-and-lime-green Coolpad logo was inside the Boost Mobile box. When I lifted the box’s flap, the phone was revealed, situated in a white tray and wrapped in a thin, opaque plastic bag. The battery, USB cord, and adapter were packaged in similar bags and tucked beneath the tray.
Activating the CLG wasn’t easy. It wouldn’t or couldn’t connect to Boost Mobile’s network. Tethering it to the Tribute Empire didn’t work either. I had to go to Boost Mobile’s website, type in the phone’s serial number, and reboot the device to get everything working.
This wouldn’t be the last time that network problems would arise.
The Outside
The Front
The Coolpad Legacy Go is a fairly plain phone. It’s bigger than our ZTE Speed in almost every way: length, weight, and screen size. Oddly, the CLG looks like a hybrid of our past and current phones too. It has the same bezels and function buttons as the Speed, but its front-facing camera and earpiece placement are nearly identical to our LG Tribute Empire.
The display is so-so. According to the CLG product page on Coolpad’s website, it’s a FWVGA screen with a resolution of 854 x 450p. The screen is bright but the colors are washed out, which makes the display look grainy. Moreover, the screen starts to gloss over if I shift the device the tiniest bit off center. This phone would not be my first choice for watching videos. I’m also not a fan of the click sound that goes off every time you lock or unlock the screen. I haven’t figured out how to turn it off yet.
Above the CLG’s screen are a front-facing camera and an earpiece on the top bezel.
I have nothing positive to say about that 2 MP camera. Not a thing.
The earpiece is a dud too. It’s hard to hear the person on the other end of a call. We’ve been told that it’s not much better from the caller’s perspective, meaning the mouthpiece on the bottom of the phone isn’t great either. There are only two ways to get through a call without yelling “What?” a million times: 1) turn on the speakerphone, or 2) put the phone practically in your mouth. That’s assuming that the call doesn’t drop altogether, which is highly likely to happen. I suspect that the phone’s data problems contribute to these problems (more on that later).
Below the screen are physical Home, Back, and Recent Apps buttons. The buttons don’t light up like the ones on the Speed did. Instead, the icons are outlined in a reflective silver color that mostly achieves the same effect as a backlight. This change probably also saves battery life.The button icons differ from the Speed’s in other ways too. The skeuomorphic button icons—a circular arrow for Back, a house for Home, and stacked lines for Recent Apps—have been replaced with a left-pointing triangle, a circle, and mirrored squares respectively. These new, modernized icons closely resemble the Tribute Empire’s onscreen buttons.
Additionally, the Back and Recent Apps buttons have been swapped from their usual positions on the bottom bezel. The Home button remains in the center, but now Back is on the right and Recent Apps is on the left. This drives me crazy when I move between phones.
The Back
The CLG’s back is a dark gray that looks closer to black from a distance. It’s decorated with subtle circular impressions that collectively resemble the surface of a golf ball. I welcome this grippable back, especially after my grumbles about the Tribute Empire’s super slippery body.
A microphone, the camera, and the flash are stacked vertically towards the top of the phone’s back. The stoplight-like arrangement reminds me of the Tribute Empire’s back, to the point that I often catch myself trying to push a nonexistent power button back there.
The camera and flash are surrounded by an oval-shaped red accent. Fun fact: everything under the CLG’s back cover is red, including the insides of the headphone jack and the microUSB port. I like it. The color is a nice surprise amongst all of the black and gray. I kind of wish that more of the phone had the red accents, like the buttons, but that probably would have come off as tacky.
The 5 MP rear camera is passable for the CLG’s price. The photos are comparable to those from the Tribute Empire’s front-facing camera (also 5 MP)—that is, a tad fuzzy but otherwise okay. The only snag is that most pictures I take with flash activated come out covered in a yellowish tint for some reason.
The speaker grill is located on the back’s lower left corner. The grill is a trio of horizontal lines comprised of small circles. It looks like a flattened hexagon or a honeycomb. The speaker sounds okay, loud and mostly clear. There is no bass to speak of, though.
The Sides
There’s a reoccurring theme of buttons and ports being located on the CLG’s right side.
First up are the volume and power buttons. The volume buttons are actually a solid bar rather than two distinct buttons. You press the top or bottom part of the bar for volume up or down accordingly. The power button is roughly half the volume bar’s size and sits beneath it.
Then there’s the USB port on the bottom, with the headphone jack mostly aligned with it on the top.
Only the second microphone, dead center on the bottom, ruins the theme.
The Inside
Battery
The Coolpad Legacy Go’s battery is rated at 12 hours of talk time. In reality, the battery life varies based on how much we use it. It’s become fairly predictable.
Here’s a look at my dad’s typical day with the battery:
- Charged to 100% before dad goes to work in the afternoon.
- Drops 2-5% before he walks out the door.
- Drops down to 70-80% (light usage) or 30-50% (heavy usage) by the time dad comes home several hours later.
- Drops down to ~50% (light usage) or nearly dead (heavy usage) by morning.
In other words, the CLG idles well but it drains fast once you start doing things with it. The Speed suffered from the exact same problem. How disappointing.
Software, OS & Performance
The CLG runs Android Oreo (Go edition). From my understanding of the OS from an Android Authority article, Android Go is a version of Android that has had its performance and storage tweaked to work better on cheap phones.
I fully expected to hate Android Go. I thought its interface would be dumbed down, like something made for a kid. But I was wrong. It is a bit simplified, but it basically works the same as the regular version of Android Oreo.
More importantly, Android Go lives up to its promises. The CLG had no crapware on it besides Facebook Lite (though it later installed a few minor utilities after an update). How refreshing! With no extra apps installed, it had roughly 60% of space left on its 8 GB capacity (with 2.3 GB dedicated to the system). The phone still has 49% of free space left as I write this.
My favorite thing about Android Go is that it constantly makes you aware of your data usage. For example, the YouTube app (aka YouTube Go) shows you how much data a video will use based on the quality level you choose (basic, standard, or high). We have limited data, so having that type of info upfront is very helpful in making me think twice about whether I want to watch that fifth or sixth K-Pop music video.
As for performance, the CLG’s product page says it runs on a Qualcomm MSM8909 1.1GHz Quad Core chip and 1 GB of memory. The phone’s ideal user is someone like my dad, who only talks and texts. While I haven’t experienced any of the crashing or choking that the Speed was infamous for, I also haven’t tried to push it to do anything beyond light web browsing and music streaming. It (understandably) lacks the advanced multitasking features I’ve become accustomed to, and it doesn’t perform tasks quite as fast as the Tribute Empire.
Data Issues
Although I’m not thrilled with the CLG’s lackluster cameras and display, the real dealbreaker is its intermittent data problems. Following the choppy activation experience, the phone kept arbitrarily losing access to mobile data. It would be working fine one minute, and then I wouldn’t be able to get online. Sometimes it only had a weak 3G connection that would cut out altogether if I did anything too heavy.
I chatted with support via the My Boost app three times. The first two times, the representatives were easily able to fix the issue remotely. The third time, none of the usual tricks worked. The representative referred me to the device management team. When I called, their rep wanted to walk me through a complete reset, which I had already tried several times on my own. I gave up. We had no data connection for about three months.
As I write this, the CLG’s data connection is back. It started working again after I installed a new software update and updated the phone’s profile. The signal is strong, and I’m having no problems tethering. Go figure.
Conclusion
The Coolpad Legacy Go is an okay phone. It looks nice, and I love its Android Go operating system. Unfortunately, practically everything else about the CLG is mediocre: screen, call quality, battery life, etc. I had expected such shortcomings from a $25 phone. I could have lived with them. We’ve done it before.
Instead, we’ll be replacing the CLG soon. Its weird network issues destroyed any leniency I was willing to give the phone. I rely on that data. Losing half of my allotment for months because of some unknown glitch was unacceptable. The trust is gone. I’m always on eggshells, afraid to do anything that might make the phone lose the signal again. I don’t need that stress. The fact that the CLG is no longer available from Boost Mobile speaks volumes.