Infinix Note 5 Review – Affordable powerhouse

People have different requirements for a Smartphone – some needs a better gaming smartphone, for some camera would be a deal breaker and for many battery should be solid. If you are one of those who give prime importance to the battery, Infinix Note 5 should be something you should look at in the affordable price segment. It comes with a 4500mAh battery and also comes clean with Android One running. For more on this battery powerhouse continue with our Infinix Note 5 review.

Box contents of Infinix Note 5

Out of the box you get:

• Note 5
• Black soft case
• 18 watts charger
• micro USB cable
• Pin
• Documents.

Design and build quality of Infinix Note 5

• 158.25 x 75.25 x 8.65
• 175 grams

Note 5 has a shiny back with a glass finish, although its plastic build. The sides sweep down and merge with the frame. It does gather fingerprint easily. The phone is available in three colors – black, grey and the blue I have here. It’s a decent look, nothing to gaga about though. The fingerprint sensor is slightly pitted in which makes it inconvenient initially until you get used to the placement. A single camera with quad flash sits at a corner and the back is complete with Infinix, Note, and Android One branding. The phone measures 175 grams and measures 8.65 mm in thickness. Considering it houses a massive 4500mAh battery inside, the extra heft is unavoidable. The right side has the power button, volume buttons and even the SIM tray unlike the common practice of having the SIM tray at the left side, it shouldn’t bother in anyways though. Note 5 accommodates triple sim slots – two for SIMs and one for microSD card for memory expansion. The phone supports 4G SIM on both the slots and also has dual VoLTE feature. At the bottom, you have the audio jack, mic, micro USB port and the speaker.

Display of Infinix Note 5

• 5.99″ LCD display
• 2160×1080 pixels
• 18:9 aspect ratio
• 2.5D glass
• 500 nits brightness

The Note 5 has a bright screen, the display is good at this segment, no complaints about it. There is no mention about Corning Gorilla glass so I assume it doesn’t sport it. The display setting has no blue light filter, quiet surprising as I thought it would default feature on Android One program. There is a LED notification light and adaptive brightness setting toggle.

Infinix Note 5 – Android One

Android One makes sure you get a very clean stock Android experience on this phone. There is no bloatware, no unnecessary pre-installed apps you need to worry. Being an Android One smartphone, the phone is committed to next two iterations of the Android versions – the Android Pie and the K. The updates should rollout seamlessly since there are not many extra tweakings on the phone. Feature-wise the phone has flip to mute, 3 finger screenshot and one hand mode. The fingerprint sensor the fastest I have come across but is reliable. There is no app lock. There is no face recognition.  

Performance of Infinix Note 5

Under the hood and powering the device is Mediatek Helio P23, the chipset is into 12 months cycle since its launch and can best be an entry-level midrange chipset from Mediatek staples. It works for normal day to day tasks. It also has a fairly good energy optimization into it. The Note 5 works well for daily tasks like attending calls, checking on WhatsApp and social apps like facebook, twitter etc. It also is ideal for video binging and not worry about battery drain. Casual games play very well but struggle against graphics intensive games. I was able to play PUBG mobile but not without lags and frame drops, understandably it runs on low graphics settings by default. The call quality is good, the loudspeaker is fairly loud. Being an Android One device, the phone is quite brisk compared to other phones running on the same chipset.

Battery life of Infinix Note 5

A massive 4500mAh battery must be reassuring for those who need a good battery backup in their phones. With Note 5, you can easily sail past 2 days and stretch it more depends on your usage. The phone comes with an 18 watts charger and the big battery manages to go from 0% to 100% under 150 minutes. Definitely, the battery is the strongest point of the Note 5.

Camera performance of Infinix Note 5

• 12MP rear camera
• 16MP selfie camera

Now to the camera part of the review. There is portrait mode, beauty mode, panorama, manual mode and the selfie camera also gets a bokeh mode. The Google Lens in baked into the camera app. There is LED flash for the selfie camera also. Note 5 supports video up to 1080p, there is no EIS. Coming to the image quality, it’s definitely an above average shooter, of course, there is some better camera Smartphone in this price segment. The images come pretty good, the background blur is acceptable too. The pictures have fairly good detailing, the color reproduction is good too.  The edge detection though is poor. The selfies are much better. [gallery columns="4" link="file" ids="14034,14035,14036,14037,14038,14039,14041,14042,14043,14044,14045,14040"]

Verdict:

Infinix Note 5 is a decent phone but what works majorly for the phone is its massive battery life. If you prioritize battery as a primary need in a Smartphone, the Infinix Note 5 would make you happy.]]>