At present there seems to be no shortage of 5G smartphones below Rs 20,000. So is the Infinix Zero 5G 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 purchased on Flipkart for Rs 17,999. The phone comes in Cosmic Black, Horizon Blue and Skylight Orange colors.
Design of Infinix Zero 5G
Infinix Zero 5G is quite long in size and it seems impossible to handle it with one hand. it iPhone 13 Pro Max Is longer than. The good thing is that its thickness is not much at 8.77mm and the weight is manageable at 199g. I had its black variant whose glossy finish catches fingerprints very easily. Stains become easily visible on it and do not go away 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 among the phones of this segment. The back panel is made of polycarbonate. After a few weeks of use without a case, there were light 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 provided in the power button. The tray on the left side has slots for two Nano SIMs and one slot for a microSD card. Headphone jack, USB Type C port and speaker are provided 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 touch sampling rate of 240Hz. The screen has a peak brightness of 500 nits. Scratch-resistant glass on the display has not been confirmed. The bezels around the display are not noticeable but the camera cutout could have been a little smaller. 33W charger, Type-A to Type-C cable, screen protector, transparent silicone case and SIM eject tool are provided in the phone box.
Specifications and software of Infinix Zero 5G
Infinix has given the phone a powerful processor in the form of MediaTek Dimension 900 processor. This is also seen in expensive phones like OnePlus Nord CE 2 (Review) and Oppo Reno 6 (Review). The chip supports 13 5G bands. The company says that it has been provided with LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage, which is not often seen in this segment.
Infinix Zero 5G has normal sensors and satellite navigation system. It has support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. The phone does not come with stereo speakers and you also do not get IP rating in it. But it has FM radio. It has a 5,000mAh battery which can keep it running 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 Android 12 update, 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 useless notifications. Apps like AHA Games, Palm Store, Hi Browser, InSync seemed unnecessary and could not be removed. Basic settings like battery usage graph are also given in the menu which seems meaningless.
I liked some elements of its UI like the XArena Games app which is a very smart app and allows some UI settings to be changed from within the game. However, it also recognized Twitter and Google Photos as games, which was quite surprising. I hope there will be improvements with the Android 12 update.
Performance and battery life of Infinix Zero 5G
The experience of using the phone is not that bad. But I would say avoid the black variant because keeping it clean is a big task as I have said earlier. Blue and orange color variants would be more appropriate. The display of the phone is bright and there is no problem in reading even outdoors. But if you do not turn on its one-handed mode, then it becomes very difficult to handle it with one hand.
The 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 lacks stereo speakers for immersive sound. The refresh rate is not dynamic and is fixed at 120Hz.
I found that when I set it to auto it runs 120Hz only on the homescreen and gallery app and 60Hz in other apps. To make scrolling smooth you have to push it to 120Hz. The phone performed well in benchmark tests. 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 played quite well on the phone. After a 30 minute session, the back of the phone started getting hot but not so hot that it could not be held in the hand.
Its battery life was also quite good during the review period. Even with heavy usage the phone lasted for more than a day. 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 charged 92 percent 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 has f/2.46 aperture and comes with 2X optical zoom. In this, digital zoom can be done up to 30X.
The camera performs really well when shooting during the day time. It gave good details in landscape and close-up shots. Exposure was handled well and focus on the subject was very sharp. I got good details in it up to 10X zoom. But as it went up the quality started deteriorating. Photos taken at 30X contained grain and things looked just recognizable. Its performance in low-light was not good at 2X. As we zoomed further, the quality became worse.
Apart from this, there is a 48-megapixel primary camera and 2-megapixel depth sensor in the rear of the phone. There is no ultraviolet lens provided in the phone. The main camera disappointed as its exposure during day time was not good. The main camera captured crisp photos in open landscapes and bright sunlight. The telephoto camera here was taking better photos than the main camera.
Low light landscape shots looked quite dark and did not have good detail. The quality improved significantly after turning on Supernight mode. Portrait mode photos were good, in which background blur was visible and edge detection was also at its place.
Its 16-megapixel selfie camera doesn’t impress much. The results are not very good in day and night. Daytime selfies were serviceable but the exposure was weak and the colors were weak. Low-light selfies were quite grainy and dark. Some improvement was seen in Super Night mode but details remained weak here too.
Infinix Zero 5G can record video up to 4K at 30fps but it does not have stabilization. Colors appeared oversaturated in videos shot in daylight. Low-light footage looked quite grainy. Even at 1080p, there was no significant improvement in video quality and the footage was not stabilised. The only way to get smooth footage was to enable Ultra Steady mode, but this resulted in frame cropping and resolution limited to 1080p at 30fps.
our decision
The Infinix Zero 5G offers good features on paper which is what 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. Rest of the camera performance is disappointing and the software experience is also not special.
If you want a phone with a good telephoto camera in this range then I would suggest spending a little more money. Motorola Edge 20 Buy which has the same 5G processor and 3X telephoto camera. Apart from this, it comes with 144Hz AMOLED display and also has IP52 rating. If your budget cannot go above Rs 20 thousand then you OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G can buy and Realme 9 5G Speed Edition Can also look towards.