Infinix S5 Review: Versatile cameras on a budget

Infinix, the smartphone brand of Hong Kong based electronics company Transsion Holdings, launched the latest smartphone in India. The company’s latest smartphone is the Infinix S5, launched with a punch-hole selfie camera, and a quad-camera setup. The company has also given a trendy macro camera lens in this camera setup. Having used the smartphone for a while, here’s my Infinix S5 review.

Infinix S5 : Design and display

The design of this smartphone is quite reminiscent of the previously launched Infinix S4. But instead of the waterdrop notch, the new smartphone gets a more trendy punch-hole camera. It also features a big 6.6-inch HD+ display.

There is a thin bezel on the right, left and top sides of the display. But similar to other Android devices, the bottom bezel is rather thick. The back of the device is made up of reflective polycarbonate, and it sports what the company calls ‘Crystal Feather’ pattern design. There are two colors to choose from – Quetzal Cyan and Violet.

At the back of the device, you also find a quad-camera setup along with an LED flash. There is also a physical fingerprint sensor placed towards the center. The right side of the phone has a volume rocker and power button. The triple card slots (two SIMs and a micro SD card) are placed on the left side. Lastly, at the bottom you find a micro-USB port for charging, 3.5mm audio jack, and mic.

The 6.6-inch display up front boasts an HD+ (1600×720 pixels) resolution, and 20:9 aspect ratio. The punch-hole design allows the device to offer a screen-to-body ratio of 90.5 percent. The display of the phone is quite bright, and I had no complaints about the legibility under direct sunlight. It also offers good vibrant color reproduction, contrast. While it is bright during the day, there’s an eye-care mode for those who prefer using the device deep into the night.

Performance

The budget device comes with a MediaTek Helio P22 SoC under the hood. Accompanying the chipset is 4GB of RAM, and 64GB expandable storage. In general use, the performance of this phone is surprisingly good, and multi-tasking was no problem at all.

It can do a bit of gaming as well, when graphics settings are kept low. PUBG Mobile worked well in low graphics settings. While it managed to run in high settings, there were visible drops in frame rates. Overall, it is a good companion for casual gamers and first-time smartphone users.

Software and Battery

The Infinix S5 smartphone runs Android 9 Pie-based XOS 5.5. The company’s custom UI comes with a host of preinstalled apps and games. Fortunately, many of them can be uninstalled. There are also some user-centric features like bike mode, one-hand support, game mode, do-not disturb, eye-care and book reading to name a few.

Making sure everything ticks is a 4,000mAh battery. It is good enough to offer a full-day worth of battery life on moderate usage. With a more heavy usage, you will have to charge the device towards the end of the day. Bundled is a 10W charger, and it takes over two hours to fully charge the battery.

Phone security is taken care of by a fingerprint sensor at the back. There’s also option for a built-in face unlock feature. Both are quite accurate and worth relying on. Overall, the smartphone does not disappoint when performance is concerned.

Camera

Talking about cameras, the Infinix S5 boasts a quad-camera setup at the back. This setup includes a 16-megapixel sensor, a 5-megapixel wide lens, a Super macro lens, and a depth sensor. The company has also added a quad-LED flash on the rear. It offers support for features like Custom Bokeh, AI HDR, AI Beauty, and Panorama modes. On the front, you get a 32-megapixel AI selfie sensor with f/2.0 aperture. The front camera supports AI Portrait, AI 3D Face Beauty, WideSelfie modes as well as AR-enabled Animoji features.

The camera app is simple, in which you get a lot of features like video, AI camera, beauty, AR shot, and panorama. Apart from this, you also get some pre-installed filters in the camera app. This phone can also do video recording in full HD.

Camera samples

The smartphone’s camera clicks good pictures in daylight condition. The AI helps give a further boost to the image output as it can automatically detect the scene and lighting. In bokeh mode, the AI camera detects human face well, but does not detect other objects properly. In low light conditions, the camera gives average performance and image quality is quite low. The front camera takes a fairly good selfie in good light conditions. However, as the light decreases, the image quality also drops significantly here.

Talking about the macro image sensor of this smartphone, it clicks great photos, which contains many details from close up. Overall the macro camera lens of this phone does its job well, and does not disappoint.

Infinix S5 Review verdict: Should you buy it?

To conclude the Infinix S5 review, it launched in India with a price tag of Rs 8,999. For its price, the smartphone offers a lot that will keep buyers happy. It is a smartphone for those needing a device with a set of capable and versatile cameras. But, this is among the most fiercely contested price segments. It faces competition from the likes of Xiaomi Redmi 8, Realme 5, and the Vivo U10 to name a few.