As the smartphone industry moves forward, companies are trying hard to differentiate between their devices. Growing demand and splurge in user spending have saturated a market that is largely dominated by Chinese giants. These companies are trying out new ways to upend the devices and tip the scales in their courts.
One such brand that takes this new route is the Infinix – a Hong Kong-based electronics company called the Transsion Holdings. The company recently joined the bandwagon of Macro camera lens smartphones such as Motorola One and OnePlus with their all-new Infinix S5.
The smartphone’s punch-hole camera design, quad cameras setup and a justified price tag make this hard to beat device in the segment. But does this translate well into everyday use, well we are here to check out!
Design and display
The design of the Infinix S5 is no brainer, the smartphone follows the same design language set by its earlier sibling with its reflective polycarbonate back. The smartphone is not built to take a lot of beating but feels rugged despite a poor choice of materials. The back houses the quad-camera setup with an LED flash and a physical fingerprint sensor in the center. The company offers the Infinix S5 in two Color options called the Quetzal Cyan and Violet.
The front packs the gigantic 6.6-inch HD+ display that houses the trendy punch-hole design for the camera with a screen-to-body ratio of 90.5 percent. This display is complemented by thin bezels on the side to render an immersive experience. In our in-house testing, we found the screen to be adequately punchy and colorful which made for an effortless movie watching experience. We also had no complaints as the display emitted sufficient brightness to meet the outdoor lighting conditions. There is also an eye-care mode to protect your sight from harmful blue light emission that is proven to hamper your sleep cycle.
Performance
The S5 packs a MediaTek Helio P22 SoC with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage. This mediocre chipset keeps up the multitasking activities surprisingly well despite its overbearing age. The chipset could also handle heavy gaming to some extent, as we managed to play PUBG at 26fps at the lowest setting. In daily use, we never noticed a hiccup or a lag despite running several apps in the background.
We must commend the efforts of Infinix in making this a solid XOS 5.5 interface. This custom UI not only offers smooth visuals but also packs in some cool user-centric features like a dedicated Bike mode, One-Hand support, Gaming mode, Do-Not-Disturb mode, and a Reading mode. The only downside we found was that users cannot choose to uninstall some of the bloatware apps that come preinstalled in the default operating system.
In regards to security, the face unlocks feature and the fingerprint sensor on the back was fairly reliable and accurate.
Camera
Speaking about the camera, the Infinix S5 boasts a quad-camera setup of 16MP sensor, 5MP Wide angle lens, a Super Macro lens and a depth sensor on the back. This setup is complemented by a quad-LED flash to get that accurate hue of the backlight in low lighting conditions.
This setup enables the S5 to click fairly decent images under sufficient sunlight. The AI does lend additional support through its automatic scene and lighting detection to boost quality. In Bokeh mode, the smartphone was able to discern the edges with a high degree of accuracy, which made for some perfect Instagram shots. The low light performance does decrease the quality of images which look a fair bit on the grainy side.
Coming to the Macro shots, the sensor worked perfectly and was able to detect objects within a 5cm distance with greater detail. These shots were comparable to the Motorola One macro we reviewed some time back.
The camera app, on the other hand, offers features like Custom Bokeh, AI HDR, AI Beauty, and Panorama modes which do come in handy at times.
The 32-megapixel AI selfie sensor on the front too works well. The front camera comes with features such as AI Portrait, AI 3D Face Beauty, Wide Selfie modes as well as AR-enabled Animoji. This does spice up the things and makes the smartphone more engaging.
Battery
The 4000mAh battery underneath the Infinix S5 is sufficient to power the device through an entire day’s worth of moderate use. However, running extensive apps and gaming applications does take a toll on battery life. Thankfully, the device comes with a 10W charger which fully charges the device in under two hours.
Gizmo Verdict
While wrapping up this review, we were left astonished. The Infinix S5 doesn’t have some standout features to brag about nor does it have an impressive design to objectify its side. What is has is a mix of things it does right. The smartphone seems to flourish in every department, be it the battery life, performance, camera, UI or display. Thus making the Infinix S5 a perfect smartphone for first-time users.
