Infinix is quickly gaining traction in the market, with its latest devices, the Note 11 Pro and Zero X Pro. Their sister companies, Tecno and Itel, are also doing well, capturing market share in Africa and South Asia. The company is expanding globally, hoping to continue its success in other parts of the world. Now we share the Zero 5G review of the first infinix 5G phone, and this phone comes with a large 5,000 mAh battery, a 6.78 inch LCD, and having unique and curved look design.
Design
The shiny finish on the back panel is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. Though the material may look like glass, the phone is actually made of plastic, and it feels like it too. There’s some give to the surface if you press on it hard enough. The volume rocker is mushy and doesn’t feel great, but the fingerprint reader slash power button is clicky and quite responsive, waking up and unlocking the phone in an instant.
Display
The infinix zero 5g has a 6.78-inch IPS LCD screen with a 1080p resolution and a 120hz refresh rate. The high refresh rate is adaptive, meaning that it can dial down depending on the content onscreen to save power. Although the high refresh rate is meant to make movement onscreen more fluid, it doesn’t really achieve its goal because the display’s pixel response time is sluggish. This results in ghosting and blurriness, despite the screen’s sharpness (388 PPI).
Additionally, the colors on this screen are not very accurate. The color profile and tone adjustment options are not available in the settings, so you can’t do much about it. Another issue is that the max brightness only goes up to 500 nits, which may not be enough for good legibility when outside in the sun.
Camera
There is a 48-megapixel quad Bayer main cam, a 13-megapixel telephoto cam with two-times optical zoom, and a depth sensor. The main cam captures 12-megapixel photos by default, and these are decent but nothing too impressive. There is an average amount of detail, and fine patterns can display a moire effect. The colors are a bit dull too and the dynamic range is limited. The camera has a lot of fine detail and a more pleasant color rendition, but there are some issues. The camera tends to over-expose shots, which is made worse by the limited dynamic range. The autofocus also isn’t very consistent.
The infinix zero 5g can shoot portraits with either the main or the telephoto camera. You’d think that the depth sensor here would help to provide great subject separation but in reality, it’s only average often getting tripped up by the hair and busy backgrounds. The zoomed portraits don’t come out very sharp either. In low light, photos from the main cam are surprisingly decent. There’s an auto night mode that kicks in when it’s dark, and the dynamic range isn’t all that bad. You get enough sharpness, and the noise is under control.
You can toggle a super night mode which improves things further with better-recovered shadows and highlights. Unsurprisingly, the telephoto cam struggles in low light shots; they come out quite soft and even sometimes blurry. Enabling super night mode will get you an over-processed but more usable result. Selfies are taken with a 16-megapixel front-facing cam, and these are solid overall. The detail and colors are on point, and the dynamic range isn’t too bad. The selfie cam is usable at night too thanks in part to the phone’s selfie dual-led flash. Videos can be captured with the main cam and up to 4k resolution at 30fps.
The zoom cameras’ videos are capped at 1080p resolution, but their color rendition is much better than the main cams. The dynamic range is decently wide, but there does seem to be too much sharpening though. There is electronic stabilization available for your video recording, but you’re limited to 1080p. It works decently, eliminating most of the camera shake.
Features
The phone comes with 128GB of storage, which is expandable via a microSD card. The Infinix Zero 5G runs XOS 10, which is based on Android 11 but features extensive customizations. One difference from stock Android you’ll notice immediately is that the standard notification shade is divided into a separate notification center and a control center.
The home screen is customizable, so you can choose from different swipe animations and set your own font color. There is always an app drawer, but you can also set the phone to organize your apps into large folders or keep them all on the home screen itself. You also get a dedicated game launcher that lets you tune your gaming experience.
The phone has a lot of proprietary features, including things like an AI assistant, smart connectivity, a system-wide translator, and power-saving controls. The chipset that powers all these features is the Mediatek Demensity 900, which is built on a six-nanometer process. This provides good mid-range performance as well as 5G connectivity. Games run well on the phone, and thermal throttling isn’t an issue.
Sound
The infinix zero 5g has a traditional headphone jack and a single bottom-firing speaker. This speaker scored a good rating on our loudness charts, and its sound quality is okay, with decent-sounding highs.
Battery
The battery life on the infinix zero 5g is great too. It has a large 5 000 million power battery and was able to score an excellent endurance rating of 140 hours in proprietary tests. Charging speed is nothing to write home about though, despite a decent size 33-watt adapter. With it, you can charge the phone from zero to 30 percent in half an hour.
