Just after half a year of launching the Infinix S4, the company is back with its successor in the budget range, yet again. With decent all-round features and a quad-camera setup, the device does feel good on the paper. But does it stand up for its paper list and perform well, continue reading to know out Infinix S5 Review.
Design and Display
With respect to the previous-gen Infinix S4, the predecessor, the new Infinix S5 now gets a punch-hole selfie camera while the former had a waterdrop notch. With a huge 6.6-inch display on the front, the bezels around are thin with a thick chin at the bottom. There are no signs of accidental touches when you usually hold the device.
On the back, you have a polycarbonate material with a reflective layer on it which the company calls Crystal Feather pattern design. With a vertically placed quad-camera setup to the top left corner of the device, there is an LED flashlight adjacent to it along with a fingerprint sensor right where your fingers usually land when you hold the device. To the bottom is the Infinix’s S branding which says “Designed by Infinix”.
Coming to the panels, you have the power button along with the volume rockers placed on the right panel and a SIM card tray which can hold two SIM cards along with a MicroSD card on the left panel. At the bottom panel, you have the MicroUSB port along with a 3.5mm headphone jack and a mic.
Upfront is the 6.6-inch HD+ display with 1600×720 pixels at a 20:9 aspect ratio. With the punch-hole camera, Infinix says that the device has about a 90.5% screen-to-body ratio. The display is exceptionally well in terms of brightness but lacks in providing crisp quality due to the lack of high resolution and the huge display. However, the colors are good with well-maintained contrast levels and media consumption is also good.
Software and Performance
The Infinix S5 runs on the XOS 5.5 based on Android 9.0 which comes with certain pre-installed apps and games. While you can uninstall any bloatware you find unnecessary, you will find some great features in the settings such as bike mode, one-hand mode, gaming mode, DND, eye care, reading mode, and more such modes. You can unlock your device with up to 5 registered fingerprints and there is also face recognition which works good enough.
The Infinix S5 comes with the MediaTek Helio P22 SoC coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage. In our daily tests, the device did work pretty good taking into consideration that we did limited multi-tasking and not so heavy usage. With just a few apps running in the background, multitasking is simply easy. Coming to some heavy game, the mobile does struggle when playing PUBG even in the lowest graphics settings but there’s not much to complain about considering the price.
Cameras: Infinix S5 Review
The Infinix S5 comes with a quad-camera setup on the rear with the primary sensor being a 16MP with f/1.8 aperture, a 5MP wide-angle lens, a super macro lens, and a depth sensor. On a good note, it also comes with a quad-LED flashlight that throws a great amount of light in lowlight conditions. With the included stock camera app, one can find many features such as custom bokeh, AI HDR, AI beauty mode, Panorama, AR stickers, and many other shooting modes.
Coming to the picture quality, the device takes some great snaps when in good lighting conditions. With the help of AI Mode, the pictures come with some optimizations with well-adjusted saturation levels. When it comes to lowlight conditions, the camera surely struggles and produces a lot of noise and grains. However, it gets a bit better with the AI scene mode.
On the front is a 32MP AI selfie sensor with f/2.0 aperture which also supports AI Portrait mode, Beauty mode, Wide-selfie mode, and AR Stickers. The selfies come out pretty good in terms of details but while shooting with portrait mode, the edge detection is not so great. Also, the dedicated super macro lens does a decent job for the price and provides great outputs.
Battery and Miscellaneous
The Infinix S5 comes with a 4000 mAh battery which will last a day without compromising on brightness levels or any as such. In our tests which include browsing, social media, media consumption, some gaming, and streaming services, the device did last a day with still some juice leftover. It comes with a 10W charger in the box which takes about 2 hours to fully charge the device which is decent.
Talking about network stability, we did not experience any kind if network stability issues and the call quality is decent enough. The speaker output is loud in a big room but lacks in the bass with some kind of distortions in highs.
Verdict: Infinix S5 Review
Overall, the device is a win for anyone looking for a feature-loaded smartphone with good camera features. Priced at Rs. 8999, the Infinix S5 offers a lot more than the competitors do. However, if you are looking for a mainstream smartphone and don’t want as many features this budget device offers, you can look at the competitors like the Xiaomi Redmi 8, Vivo U10, Realme 5 and other devices in this price range.
Pros:
- Good build quality and design
- Quad-camera setup
- Punch-hole camera design
- Impressive battery life
Cons:
- Huge display but lacks in resolution
- Performance is shaggy
- Custom UI with bloatware
