The Zero 5 Pro is the latest smartphone from Infinix, a Hong-Kong based company. Infinix has been selling smartphones in India for a little while now, and the Zero 5 Pro is its current flagship device. What is interesting about this smartphone is that it offers 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage, and dual rear cameras with optical zoom at Rs 19,999. Those specifications sound impressive for the price, but should you jump at the chance to buy this phone? We review to find out.
The Infinix Zero 5 Pro is a big phone, with a screen measuring 5.98 inches. Infinix has used an LTPS IPS display with a full-HD resolution. It doesn’t have the new 18:9 aspect ratio that is becoming popular, and sticks to the traditional 16:9 format. It has thin borders on the sides but thicker ones on the top and bottom. There's 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. Above the screen, you get a metal earpiece that sits flush with the glass panel, and a 16-megapixel selfie camera along with its own flash.
The top of the back has a panel similar to the ones on some Huawei phones such as the Nexus 6P and the Huawei P9. This is where the dual cameras are placed. There's a 12-megapixel camera module in addition to a 13-megapixel one, plus a single-LED flash. The fingerprint scanner on the Zero 5 Pro is positioned at the back and has a bronze ring highlighting it. The sensor is well positioned, and despite the Zero 5 Pro being a bigger device we had no issues when using it, though your mileage may vary. Though the scanner is quite accurate, we found it to be slow to unlock the phone.
The Zero 5 Pro has a metal unibody with antenna bands running along the top and bottom. The body also has a bronze-coloured chamfered border around the front which shines when light reflects off it. The rounded corners and curved sides at the back help improve grip, but it's still large and heavy.
The phone weighs 197 grams which is definitely noticeable, but the weight is at least spread out well. Not everyone will find this phone easy to use. It packs in a 4350mAh battery and has a USB Type-C port at the bottom, alongside the 3.5mm headphone jack. Infinix has been thoughtful and thrown in an 18W charger that works quickly, as well as a Micro-USB to Type-C adapter.
The first thing to grab your attention on the Infinix Zero 5 Pro is the display. The 5.98-inch LTPS panel is vivid and has excellent viewing angles. You get options to tweak the output to suit your liking. It sports a full-HD resolution and can get really bright, making it easy to see under sunlight. While stereo speakers would have done better justice to this screen, the single downward-firing speaker is loud enough when watching videos and playing games.
Powering the phone is a MediaTek Helio P25 processor, with four cores clocked at 1.7GHz and the other four clocked at 2.4GHz. There is 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and if you manage to fill that up, the Zero 5 Pro can also accept microSD cards of up to 128GB. In terms of connectivity, the smartphone has Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi b/g/n, USB-OTG, and a Type-C port. The Zero 5 Pro is a dual SIM device and has two Micro-SIM slots. It has support for 4G and VoLTE but only one SIM can access the 4G network at a time.
Infinix has the custom XOS Hummingbird UI running on top of Android Nougat. The UI is tweaked to some extent but is functionally similar to stock Android with a few additions such as gesture control. It shouldn’t take long to get used to using this phone. However, the look isn’t as clean as stock Android, and there's some preinstalled bloatware including TouchPal keyboard, PHX Browser, and a Service app.
There is Dual Apps support through an app called Multi Account. You also have the option to lock an app using the fingerprint scanner. The software has a few nifty additions such as Freezer, which freezes apps that you don’t use frequently to prevent them from consuming resources. Another such addition is Sleep Cleanup which kicks in to free up memory when the phone has been left idle for a while.
We found the performance of the Zero 5 Pro to be good, and we did not have to deal with any lag or stutter. With 6GB of RAM at its disposal, the phone can multitask easily while holding apps in memory. We played games such as Shadow Fight 3 and Clash Royale which the phone ran without breaking into a sweat. In Antutu, it managed to clock 67,826 points, and also scored 858 and 4083 respectively in Geekbench's single-core and multi-core tests.
The Helio P25 is powerful enough for day-to-day tasks, and efficient enough to last over a day and a half with light to medium use. The 4350mAh battery managed to last for close to 18 hours in our HD video loop test. The supplied charger is an 18W unit and works quite quickly considering the capacity of this battery.
The dual camera setup on the Infinix Zero 5 Pro comprises of a 12-megapixel sensor with a wide-angle lens, and a 13-megapixel sensor with a telephoto lens. The camera app is easy to use and has most common modes including a professional mode which gives you a wide range of parameters to control. Landscape shots have a decent amount of detail but are slightly grainy, and the camera could do with better light metering. Macros are sharp but the camera occasionally takes a little too long to lock focus. In low light, the camera switches to night mode automatically and delivers usable shots. The Zero 5 Pro manages to keep noise under control but the output is a little too grainy for our liking.
Selfies are good and the front flash does come in handy. You can alter the intensity of the flash to get a better shot. Beautification is also available and lets you smoothen the output. The Zero 5 Pro is capable of recording full-HD video with both its front and rear cameras. Beautification mode can also be used when recording a video.
Verdict
The Infinix Zero 5 Pro is loaded with features. We liked the display for its vivid output and found the battery life to be more than sufficient. The processor is capable of running day-to-day tasks and is frugal when it comes to power consumption. The dual cameras with a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens give this phone an edge over competitors at this price level. However, the camera software could do with a bit of fine-tuning to improve the final output. For Rs 19,999 the Infinix is a good pick if you can live with its camera performance.
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