TECH BREAK: Infinix Note 5 comes with improved features

The Infinix Note 5. PHOTO | HILLARY KIMUYU

What you need to know:

  • Its sleek design is composed of a curved back cover and the front 2.5D glass and a metallic print made up of composite board.
  • The smart AI-powered camera recognises your environment and chooses the best possible setting for that quality shot.
  • Note 5 comes with a massive 4500 mAh battery, which can give you a three-day battery life.

The latest Infinix Note 5 makes almost an overhaul of the improvements in last year’s Note 4 and Note 4 Pro.

It doesn’t come with the X Pen, which many people who used the device complained about it.

The Note 5 spells a new direction for the Chinese company, more so because they have equipped the device with quite some “2018” features such as the 18:9 display and more importantly, Android One, which means for the first time in a Note series, we get an adulterated software experience.

Design and build -- It features a sleek, smooth imitation-glass polycarbonate back surface that Infinix calls Metal Print. Its sleek design is composed of a curved back cover and the front 2.5D glass and a metallic print made up of composite board.

At the back, the 12MP rear camera and dual LED flash are encased in a protective rim. The top and left rib-side don’t feature any slots or buttons; you will find those on the right side.

At the bottom of the device are the speakers, Micro-USB and audio jack slots.

The audio jack slot of the Infinix Note 5 is at the bottom. PHOTO | HILLARY KIMUYU

Camera -- The camera is perhaps the only Infinix app to make it to the roster. The XOS Camera 3.0 packs a bunch of eye-popping features for those brave enough to tweak this and that.

The smart AI-powered camera recognises your environment and chooses the best possible setting for that quality shot. The front camera has the same low-light AI Selfie that Infinix goes on about.

As for the camera features, you can play around with Normal, Burst, Beauty, Video and other modes.

You will love time-lapse, which does some voodoo trick. Time-lapse fast-forwards a video so that you can capture a lot of scenes in a short space of time. Alongside time-lapse, you also get panorama which takes a really wide angle of any scenery.

Performance -- The gadget 5 packs the impressively faster Helio P23 chipset with an Octa-Core 2.0 GHz 64bit, ARM Cortex-A53 Mali-G71 MP2 Processor. A screen resolution of 2160 x 1080, a video encoder shooting H.264 videos at 2160P, 12MP & 16MP cameras shooting at 4032 x 3024 and 4608 x 3456 pixels, respectively.

SoC modem with dual standby 4G LTE/VoLTE dual SIM.

Responsiveness is good enough from what we have seen so far. It loads fast and the apps are not sluggish. The resolution is immersive and the colours are rich and vibrant.

The glossy metal print back of the Infinix Note 5 is too slippery to safely without a jacket and screen protector. PHOTO | HILLARY KIMUYU

Battery and Charging -- Note 5 comes with a massive 4500 mAh battery, which can give you a three-day battery life.

Infinix claims that the Note 5 comes with Smart Power Consumption.

A baked-in intelligent process manager learns a user’s habits and automatically deactivates lesser-used apps and background processes.

Downside of Note 5 -- The glossy metal print back is too slippery to safely use the Note 5 without a jacket and screen protector.

Additionally, the audio jack slot is at the bottom, there is no FM radio and no screen night mode. Tapping the home button doesn’t take you to the home screen; it has only up to three-finger multi-touch and the fingerprint sensor has limited uses. It also doesn’t have the double-tap to wake feature.

 

The handset retails at Sh17,939.