Currently, there is no dearth of 5G smartphones under 20 thousand rupees. So can the Infinix Zero 5G be recommended at this price point? Let’s find out.
Infinix Zero 5G price in India
Infinix Zero 5G Comes with a single 8GB RAM and 128GB storage variant. Its price is Rs 19,999. Currently it can be bought on Flipkart for Rs 17,999. The phone comes in Cosmic Black, Horizon Blue, and Skylight Orange colours.
Infinix Zero 5G Design
The Infinix Zero 5G is quite tall in size and it seems impossible to handle with one hand. This iPhone 13 Pro Max is longer than that. The good thing is that its thickness is not much at 8.77mm and the weight can be handled with 199g. I had its black variant whose glossy finish catches fingerprints very easily. The spots are easily visible on it and do not leave quickly even after cleaning. In such a situation, keeping it clean also becomes a big task.
Its rear camera module is reminiscent of Oppo Find X5 Pro. It appears to emerge from the back panel and looks quite attractive. Because of this, it looks quite good and different in the phone of this segment. The back panel is made of polycarbonate. After a few weeks of use without the case, there were minor scratches on its bottom.
The volume and power buttons are given on the right side of the phone and there is no clicky feel when pressed. Fingerprint scanner is given in the power button. The tray on the left side has slots for two nano SIMs and a slot for a microSD card. Headphone jack, USB Type C port and speaker are given at the bottom of the phone.
Infinix Zero 5G has a 6.78 inch IPS LCD full-HD + display. It has a refresh rate of 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 240Hz. The screen gets a peak brightness of 500 nits. The scratch protection glass on the display has not been confirmed. The bezels around the display are not shaky but the camera cutout could have been a bit smaller. The phone’s box includes a 33W charger, Type-A to Type-C cable, screen protector, transparent silicone case and SIM eject tool.
Specifications and Software of Infinix Zero 5G
Infinix has given a powerful processor to the phone in the form of MediaTek Dimension 900 processor. It is also seen in expensive phones such as OnePlus Nord CE 2 (Review) and Oppo Reno 6 (Review). The chip supports 13 5G bands. The company says that it has LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage, which is not often seen in this segment.
Common sensors and satellite navigation system have been given in Infinix Zero 5G. It supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. The phone doesn’t come with stereo speakers and you don’t even get an IP rating. But it has FM radio. It has a 5,000mAh battery which can last it for at least a full day.
The company’s custom skin XOS 10 has been given in Zero 5G, which is based on Android 11. The phone will also get an update to Android 12, but not before August. I would like to say that XOS is not my favorite because its UI elements are very busy and sometimes it is very difficult to find what we are looking for.
There are many pre-installed apps available in the phone which keep sending notifications without working. Apps like AHA Games, Palm Store, Hi Browser, InSync were considered unnecessary and could not be removed. Basic settings like battery usage graph are also given in the menu which seems meaningless.
I like some elements of its UI like XArena Games app which is a very smart app, with the help of this some UI settings can be changed from inside the game. However, it also recognized Twitter and Google Photos as games, which was quite surprising. I hope it improves with the Android 12 update.
Infinix Zero 5G performance and battery life
The experience of using the phone is not so bad. But I would say avoid the black variant as it is a big task to keep it clean as I have said before. Blue and Orange color variants will be more correct. The display of the phone is bright and there is no problem in reading even in outdoors. But if you do not turn on its one-handed mode, then it is very difficult to handle it with one hand.
Videos streamed on the phone looked quite good, with good colors and brightness. It does not support HDR video playback. The single speaker is loud but stereo speakers are lacking for immersive sound. The refresh rate is not dynamic and is fixed at 120Hz.
I found that when I set it to auto it plays 120Hz on the homescreen and gallery app itself and 60Hz in the rest of the apps. You have to push it to 120Hz for smooth scrolling. The phone performed well in the benchmark test. The phone scored 475,637 points on AnTuTu. It also scored 730 and 2,037 points in Geekbench’s single and multi-core tests, respectively. Games like Asphalt 9: Legends and Call of Duty: Mobile ran well on the phone. After a 30-minute session, the back of the phone started heating up but it was not hot enough that it could not be held in hand.
Its battery life was also very good during the review period. The phone lasted more than a day even with heavy usage. It lasted 16 hours and 35 minutes in our HD video loop test, which is above average. Its charger charges the battery very quickly. Its battery got 92 percent charged in one hour.
Infinix Zero 5G cameras
Its telephoto camera is a special point which makes it stand apart from others in this segment. It has a resolution of 13 megapixels and comes with autofocus. It is with f / 2.46 aperture and comes with 2X optical zoom. It can be digitally zoomed up to 30X.
The camera performs really well when shooting during day time. It gave good details in landscape and closeup shots. The exposure was handled well and the focus on the subject was quite sharp. I got good details in it till 10X zoom. But on top of that, the quality started deteriorating. Photos taken at 30X showed grains and things just looked recognizable. Its performance in low-light was not good at 2X. On zooming further, the quality got worse.
Apart from this, there is a 48-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel depth sensor in the rear of the phone. There is no ultrawide lens in the phone. The main camera has disappointed as its exposure was not good during day time. In the open landscape and bright sunlight, the main camera took photos from the washed out. The telephoto camera was taking better photos here than the main camera.
Landscape shots in low light looked very dark and did not have good detail. The quality improved a lot after turning on the Supernight mode. Photos in Portrait mode were good, with background blur looking good and edge detection also fine.
Its 16-megapixel selfie camera doesn’t impress much. The results are not very good in day and night. Daytime selfies were usable but with poor exposure, colors were weak. Low-light selfies were grainy and dark. There was some improvement in Super Night Mode but details remained weak here too.
The Infinix Zero 5G can record videos up to 4K at 30fps but does not get stabilization. Colors were oversaturated in videos shot in daylight. Low-light footage looked quite grainy. There was not much improvement in video quality even at 1080p and the footage was not stabilized. The only way to get smooth footage was to enable Ultra Steady mode, but the frame was cropped and the resolution was limited to 1080p at 30fps.
our decision
The Infinix Zero 5G on paper offers decent features which first caught my attention. Its processor is obviously good, battery life is also good and charging is also fast. The telephoto camera is above average. The performance of the rest of the camera disappoints and the software experience is also not good.
If you want a phone with a good telephoto camera in this range, I would suggest spending a little more money. Motorola Edge 20 Buy one that has the same 5G processor and 3X telephoto camera. Apart from this, it comes with 144Hz AMOLED display and IP52 rating is also available. If your budget cannot go above 20 thousand then you OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G can buy and Realme 9 5G Speed ​​Edition You can also look towards