Infinix S5 Review: Budget smartphones have been pretty exciting this year. The market has seen a number of these devices being launched due to their high demand. Brands like Huawei, Tecno, Infinix, Samsung, Xiaomi have been doing their best to capture this market. Previously, it was really hard to find budget phones with good displays, large batteries and even quad cameras for as little as Ksh.15,000. Things are completely different right now.
The Infinix S5 is one of these devices. The device finally went on sale in Kenya and Infinix actually launched two variants, the Infinix S5 and Infinix S5 Lite. The new S5 take over the S4 announced earlier this year in the country. The company has made massive improvements on this one, part of the main highlights being the punch-hole display instead of a waterdrop notch and a quad-camera setup on the back.
We already did the unboxing video and article for you which you can read about here.
Infinix S5 Design and Display
As we mentioned earlier, the Infinix S5 is one of those devices in the market that comes with a punch-hole display located on the left upper side of the display. The display is large at 6.6-inch IPS LCD and is presented in a 20:9 aspect ratio with the punch hole pushing the device to achieve a high screen to body ratio of 90.5 per cent. The bezels are slim all around except at the for the chin at the bottom. This gives the phone a pretty good look.
The display is quite bright and the colour saturation is also amazing. At regular viewing distance, icons and text look pleasing enough, videos are however not that sharp. The lack of an ambient sensor also means you you will have to manually adjust the brightness depending on where and when you’re using the phone.
The entire Infinix S5 body is made of plastic with a glossy finish at the back. The back has this ‘’feather’’ pattern which I really like. It looks really nice. The fingerprint sensor at the back has a different texture making it easy for you to reach.
The speaker, Charging Port, Microphone and Headphone Jack are all at the bottom. The volume and power buttons are all on the right side while the opposite side houses separate slots for the two SIM cards and microSD card. On the back of the device, you find a quad-camera setup placed on the top left with an LED flash next to the camera array and a fingerprint sensor aligned at the centre.
The Infinix S5 is available in Quetzal Cyan, Violet and Nebula Black colour options, our review unit was Quetzal Cyan.
Infinix S5 Specs, Performance and Battery Life
Under the hood, Infinix S5, like its predecessor, still retains the MediaTek Helio P22 chipset clocked at 2GHz. The device comes in a memory configuration of 4GB RAM + 64GB ROM. Infinix S5 comes with Android 9.0 Pie out of the box splashed on top with XOS 5.5 Cheetah user interface. The chipset does a decent job powering the huge display.
The overall performance is decent, no complaints about that. Basic functions like calls, messages, browsing the internet works just fine. Multitasking was also very easy. The processor however really struggles when doing graphic-demanding tasks. The phone also tends to heat up when put on some heavy use.
I need to also mention that that XOS Cheetah on the Infinix S5 which is at version 5.5.2 is pretty straightforward. Quick settings and notifications are on the top, and you also get the Google Digital Wellbeing in the settings app. Just like we have seen in previous Infinix devices, there are also a number of UI additions like the Palm Store and AHA Games that offer curated apps and games. These apps will spam you with notifications which is really annoying. Unfortunately, they cannot be uninstalled meaning you will have to get used to them.
The fingerprint sensor is also very fast. The phone also comes with face recognition too which was also fast as long as there’s enough lighting in the room.
The Infinix S5 is powered by a 4,000 mAh battery, which does an excellent job. We managed to clock a day and some 14 hours or run with basic usage which included just calls, using the camera and playing few games. The phone comes with 10W MicroUSB-based charger and takes more than two hours to charge the phone from 0 to 100%.
Infinix S5 Camera
The S5 comes with a quad-camera setup placed on the top left with an LED flash next to the camera array. It’s a 16MP primary camera, 5MP wide-angle lens (114-degree field-of-view), a 2MP depth sensor, and 2.5cm range Super Macro lens. The front camera has a 32 MP sensor.
Read a full camera review here.
Infinix S5 Verdict, Price and Availability
The Infinix S5 is a good device, maybe not the best we have seen from Infinix this year but with it, Infinix continues its legacy of offering premium features at an affordable price. The phone comes with the most sought features including the quad-cameras and the punch-hole display which makes it really stand out.
Infinix S5 is available at a starting price of Ksh 16,499 for the 4GB/64GB model and Ksh 20,999 for the 6GB/128GB variant. You can grab one at Infnix’s official online store.
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