Infinix Smart 5A Review: The Better Entry Level Smartphone

Infinix has come up with a new entry-level Smart 5A smartphone in India. It features an HD+ display, 5000mah battery, dual rear camera setup, and a MediaTek Helio A20 SoC. If we talk about the price, the smartphone has been launched in India with a price tag of Rs. 6,699 for a single storage variant offering 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. The phone is available in three color options: Midnight Black, Ocean Wave, and Quetzal Cyan. But whether this budget-friendly smartphone is a good choice or not, let’s find out.

Design and build

If we talk about the design, the Infinix Smart 5A features a 6.52-inch display which is smaller compared to its predecessor Smart 5 which features a slightly bigger 6.82-inch display. The back has a plastic body with a gradient feel, which the company calls ‘Prism Flow Design’. It certainly doesn’t offer a premium feel but looks attractive in design. The phone is neither too thick nor too heavy, and it is easy to use with one hand. However, because of its back panel, the phone is a little bit slippery, and you might find it hard to handle for the first few days.

It has a somewhat basic design at the back with a fingerprint in the center and the dual-camera setup boxes in a rectangular module slightly raised at the left side on the top. The fingerprint is in an ideal position which makes it easy to access for everyone. As usual, because of its gradient-like shiny design, the back panel attracts many fingerprints and smudges, but the phone does come with a transparent case in the box like all the smartphones today do.

The sim tray exists on the left side of the device, and on the right side, you will find the power button and volume buttons. Both the buttons are easy to reach and tactile in feedback. There is nothing on the top; you will find the 3.5 mm headphone jack primary microphone, micro USB port for charging, and a speaker grill at the bottom of the phone. The micro USB port is a bit of a letdown, considering that most smartphones now come with a USB type-c port.

Display

The 6.52-inch HD+ display has a resolution of 1560×720. Similar to many budget smartphones, the screen has a water drop notch at the top. The bezels are pretty slim on the side and top of the screen, while it is a bit thick at the chin for the rest of the device. The device also has a dual flash set up in front for your nighttime selfies located in the top bezel. The rest of the display comes with an aspect ratio of 20:9, and it reaches a peak brightness of 500 nits which is good for indoors but insufficient in broad daylight. 

Performance

Under the hood, the phone has the MediaTek Helio A20 quad-core processor. The processor is based on a 12nm process. As we mentioned, the smartphone comes with only 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, which is not that much for today’s power-hungry apps. You can expand the memory up to 256 GB as the phone comes with a dedicated MicroSD card slot. In terms of software, the phone comes with Android 11 go edition, and on top of it, it has the custom UI from Infinix company named XOS 7.6. 

Talking more about the interface, it has few customizations along the line and comes with many bloatware apps pre-installed like AHA games and Palm Store. The app store is a bit spammy as it keeps pushing you unnecessary notifications throughout the day and might irritate you sometimes when you are working. But there are some valuable features, such as WhatsApp mode, which allows you to access data from WhatsApp Messenger. You will also find a smart panel that can come in handy and be accessed from any screen.

In terms of day-to-day performance, the smartphone appears to be a bit slow. You have to wait several seconds for apps to load, which is longer than usual. Multitasking on the phone with 2GB RAM is certainly not good due to the same issue: fingerprint scanner and face recognition also take a little longer to unlock the phone. But with this price tag, there is nothing to complain about the performance.

With the current RAM and storage configuration, the phone is certainly not a good pick for gaming because it takes time to load apps. You can forget about playing a graphic-intensive game on the phone, such as Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI). So, the phone is a good choice if you are a casual gamer and play light games on the phone for just a few minutes a day.

Camera

Let’s talk about another important feature which is the camera of the Infinix Smart 5A phone. The phone has a very busy basic dual camera setup with an 8-megapixel primary sensor and a secondary depth sensor for your portrait shots. For selfies, you have an 8-megapixel front camera in the water drop notch paired with two selfie flashlights in the top bezel. The camera app on the phone is straightforward and has just a couple of options to shoot photos or videos. All the phone has smart AI scene detection and HDR mode. The slow actions of the app may upset you. 

Performance-wise the shots taken in broad daylight are very quiet average and lack dynamic range and details. Close-up shots of certain objects were good with decent details. The pictures taken in low-light conditions like indoors were below average. Also, the smartphone lacks night mode in the camera app. 

Now for your selfies, you might have a good experience in average daylight but not in low light conditions. Despite having dual LED flashlights, the output of the front camera in low light is overexposed. When it comes to video recording, it is average on this phone but does provide good results in daylight, but it is useless in low light conditions. 

Battery

One of the strongest points of this smartphone is its 5000mah battery, which is the company’s selling point. You can easily go on for nearly two days with moderate usage on this big battery. The phone comes with a 10-watt charger in the box to get your phone to 20% battery from 0 after 30 minutes of charging. But because of its big battery and slow charging rate, it takes more than 2 hours to charge the phone entirely. 

Conclusion

The Infinix Smart 5A comes up as a winner in two departments -display and battery. So the phone can be a good companion for all your multimedia needs throughout the day. The rest of the features like the camera and processor are made for essential functions like calling and using social media. If you are looking for a secondary phone with a low price tag, then this is the phone for you; otherwise, you should stay away from this smartphone and opt for a better one.