Infinix Zero 5G Review: Battery and processor are powerful!

Xiaomi and Realme are two such big brands that have captured the mainstream and mid-range phone segment. Smartphones are launched by both the companies at short intervals, so sometimes the attention of the customers also goes to small players, who provide interesting features at low prices. Infinix Zero 5G is also one such smartphone. This is the only smartphone under Rs 20,000, which has a 2X optical zoom telephoto camera. The second special thing is that this is the company’s first 5G smartphone. It was launched in February 2022 and has very interesting features.

There seems to be no shortage of 5G smartphones under Rs 20,000 at the moment. So is the Infinix Zero 5G recommendable 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. It is priced at 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 colours.

Design of Infinix Zero 5G

The Infinix Zero 5G is quite long in size and it seems impossible to handle it with one hand. It is even longer than the iPhone 13 Pro Max. 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 are easily visible on it and do not go away easily even after cleaning. In such a situation, keeping it clean also becomes a big task.

Its rear camera module reminds me of Oppo Find X5 Pro. It appears to emerge from the back panel and looks quite attractive. Due to this, it looks quite good and different in the phones of this segment. The back panel is made of polycarbonate. After using it for a few weeks without a case, there were minor scratches on its bottom.

The volume and power buttons are given on the right side of the phone and the lack of clicky feel on pressing is a big problem. The power button has a fingerprint scanner. The tray given on the left side has slots for two nano SIMs and one slot for a microSD card. The 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 has a peak brightness of 500 nits. Scratch-proof glass has not been confirmed on the display. The bezels around the display are not irritating but the camera cutout could have been a little smaller. The phone box includes a 33W charger, Type-A to Type-C cable, screen protector, transparent silicone case and SIM eject tool.

Infinix Zero 5G Specifications and Software

Infinix has given the phone a powerful processor in the form of MediaTek Dimensity 900 processor. It 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 LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage, which is not often seen in this segment.

Infinix Zero 5G has the usual sensors and satellite navigation system. It supports 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 run it for at least a full day.

Zero 5G has the company’s custom skin XOS 10 which is based on Android 11. The phone will also get an update of 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 the thing we are looking for.

There are many pre-installed apps in the phone which keep sending unnecessary 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 useless.

I liked some elements of its UI, such as the XArena Games app which is a very smart app, and with its help some UI settings can be changed from within the game. However, it also identified Twitter and Google Photos as games, which was quite surprising. I hope this will improve with the Android 12 update.

Infinix Zero 5G performance and battery life

The experience of using the phone is not that bad. But I would say avoid the black variant as keeping it clean is a big task as I have already mentioned. The blue and orange colour variants would be better. 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 seems very difficult to handle it with one hand.

Videos streamed on the phone looked quite good, with good colors and brightness. There is no support for HDR video playback. The single speaker is loud but the lack of stereo speakers is felt 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 at 120Hz only on the homescreen and gallery app and drops to 60Hz in other apps. You have to push it to 120Hz to make scrolling smooth. The phone performed well in benchmark tests. The phone scored 475,637 points on AnTuTu. It also scored 730 and 2,037 points respectively in Geekbench’s single and multi-core tests. Games like Asphalt 9: Legends and Call of Duty: Mobile ran quite well on the phone. After a 30-minute session, the back of the phone started heating up but it was not so hot that it could not be held in the hand.

Battery life was also quite good during the review period. The phone lasted more than a day even with heavy usage. In our HD video loop test, it lasted 16 hours and 35 minutes which is above average. The charger charges the battery quite quickly. The battery was charged to 92 percent in one hour.

Infinix Zero 5G Camera

Its telephoto camera is a special point that makes it stand out from others in this segment. It has a resolution of 13 megapixels and comes with autofocus. It has an f/2.46 aperture and comes with 2X optical zoom. Digital zoom up to 30X can be done in it.

The camera performs really well when shooting during the day. It gives good details in landscapes and closeup shots. Exposure is handled well and the focus on the subject is quite sharp. I got good details up to 10X zoom. But above that, the quality starts deteriorating. Photos taken at 30X showed grains and objects looked barely recognizable. In low light, its performance was not good at 2X. The quality deteriorated further on zooming further.

Apart from this, the phone has a 48-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel depth sensor at the rear. There is no ultrawide lens in the phone. The main camera has disappointed because its exposure was not good during the day. In open landscapes and bright sunlight, the main camera took washed-out photos. Here, the telephoto camera was taking better photos than the main camera.

Landscape shots taken in low light looked quite dark and lacked detail. The quality improved a lot after turning on the Supernight mode. Portrait mode photos were good, with good background blur and edge detection.

Its 16-megapixel selfie camera doesn’t impress much. The results in day and night are not very good. Daytime selfies were usable but the exposure was weak and the colours were weak. Low-light selfies were quite grainy and dark. The Super Night mode showed some improvement but details were weak here too.

The Infinix Zero 5G can record videos up to 4K at 30fps but there is no stabilization. Videos shot in daylight were oversaturated in color. Low-light footage looked quite grainy. Even at 1080p, there was no significant improvement in video quality and the footage was not stabilized. The only way to get smooth footage was to enable Ultra Steady mode, but this cropped the frame and limited the resolution to 1080p at 30fps.

Our verdict

The Infinix Zero 5G offers good features on paper which is what caught my attention in the first place. Its processor is obviously good, battery life is also good and charging is also fast. The telephoto camera is above average. The rest of the camera performance is disappointing and the software experience is also not great.

If you want a phone with a good telephoto camera in this range, then I would suggest you spend a little more money and buy Motorola Edge 20 which has the same 5G processor and 3X telephoto camera. Apart from this, it comes with a 144Hz AMOLED display and also gets IP52 rating. If your budget cannot go above 20 thousand then you can buy OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G and can also look at Realme 9 5G Speed ​​Edition.