With the rise of Chinese smartphones offering a good ratio of value for money, customers are bombarded by the hoard of options to choose from. Sticking to a budget no longer means you have to compromise on premium features such as quad camera, massive displays, snappier processors, and a promising looking battery. One of the relatively brand to join this bandwagon is the new Infinix S5 Lite smartphone.
The smartphone is a toned-down version of the S5, gets some downgraded specs aimed at outright millennials. So does the S5 Lite have all it takes to rival the segment-leading Xiaomi smartphone, Let’s take look?
Design and display
With a similar design as the S5, Infinix has stuck to the punch hole shaped design that houses the front-facing camera unit. It’s impressive how the company has managed to deliver this feature at such an intermediate price point. Being less intrusive than the notch-shaped displays means the S5 Lite screen is far more immersive as you start to forget the peeping camera while watching a movie or playing a game.
The large 6.6-inch HD+ screen is nothing short of a phablet, however smart proportions and minimal bezels make the form factor pocketable. The display puts a decent amount of brightness, which makes it legible under direct sunlight, but the ambient sensor on the front fails to discern the surrounding light, which is a big problem.
Coming in at such a low price means you have to compromise on fit and finish. The S5 Lite is made out of glossy plastic with a glittery finish and a fingerprint sensor on the back. The buttons feel a lot tactile, but its odd size makes reaching them a task.
Cameras
The S5 Lite, unlike the S5, gets a triple camera lens setup on the back. This setup comprises of a 16MP primary lens, 2MP Depth lens, and a Low light sensor on the back.
The shots take though this lens blew out expectations with its beautiful contrasts and saturation level. The images come out to be sharp, and HDR mode makes it even better. Portraits taken from the lens, too, seem right for the cost of owning this smartphone.
With falling light, the camera starts to struggle and heavily relies on the AI to keep up. The shots fared well with a sufficient amount of detail lying around the noisy looking background. As far as the selfies go, the beauty mode works well and makes the shot useable, leaving out many features.
Overall, the camera performance fell well below the one we observed with Redmi 7, which is a notch better than the two.
Performance and software
Running this smartphone is a MediaTek Helio P22 chipset, which, despite its ageing timeline, has kept pace with the demands. The device handles multiple tasks with ease and also manages to run some moderate games exceptionally well. Pushing this device to the limit was met with a lot of frame drops, and app failure as the smartphone refreshed each app every time, we switched them.
The device runs on XOS 5.5 made by Infinix, which underpins the Android 9.0 Pie platform with promised security patches for two years. The interface is ok-ish for the best part, but you start to dislike the excessive bloatware in from of useless apps lying around the UI. The worst part of these apps is the notifications that couldn’t be turned off.
Battery life
The battery is a solid 4000mAh unit that lasted a full day worth of heavy use. This use included some camera shots, social networks, messaging, gaming, and a bit of social media. The absence of a fast-charging tech means it takes two hours to top up the battery.
Gizmo Verdict
Considering the price point of the S5 Lite, the bar was sufficiently low. Still, the smartphone raised the expectations with its super impressive display, the right level of performance, and stable battery life. For this cost, you get a solid smartphone that offers 4GB of RAM, USB-C port, Splash Proof rating, and triple camera setup, which no other rival offers. But for those who need the absolute best, Xiaomi’s Redmi 8 might be the right choice.
