Infinix Note 7 Review: Good Performer with A Huge Display!

Infinix is a Hong-Kong based smartphone manufacturer that focuses on budget phones. Its main market is Middle East countries and African countries. However, it’s a new brand for Nepal.

Right now, there are only two Infinix smartphones in Nepal and one of them is the Infinix Note 7. It’s a budget phone with a big screen and a quad-camera setup. Infinix Note 7 price in Nepal is Rs. 21,990 for 4GB RAM and 128GB variant.

So, can it compete with the like of Redmi and Realme in a fierce mid-range market? Let’s see!

Infinix Note 7 Review

Good design

• 173.4 x 79 x 8.8 mm
• 206 g
• Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)

Infinix Note 7 looks like the Nokia 7.2 with its circular camera design on the rear. The back is made out of plastic even though it looks like glass. The glossy finish on the back actually looks like the ones we see on Samsung A series of phones.

On the front, it has a hole punch design with minimal bezels and the chin is also quite thin. The buttons are on the right with the power button also serving as a fingerprint sensor. On the left, there’s a slot for dual sim and a micro SD card.

On the bottom, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack a micro USB port, and a speaker. On the top there’s a second speaker as well. So, it has a stereo speaker setup with DTS support.

The phone is well built and has a good feel to it. The plastic back definitely catches smudges and scratches. So, it’s good to use a case if you don’t want the phone to get scratched. It’s a big phone so, using it in a single hand is a bit cumbersome.

Overall, I do like its build and design. It doesn’t come off as a cheap phone.

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Big 720 Display

• 6.95 inches IPS LCD
• 720×1640 Resolution
• 258 ppi

Infinix Note 7 has a huge 6.95 inches IPS LCD display. But it’s only an HD display so it has a screen resolution of 720 x 1640.

The colors look fine and the display is a bit on the warmer side. Since it’s a big display, watching YouTube videos is enjoyable but you are limited to HD videos. You cannot watch the videos in FHD as it’s only an HD display. Also, there’s no option to change the warmth of the display.

Its brightness is not impressive though. It is good enough for indoors but it does feel slightly uncomfortable when using outdoors under sunlight.

On overall it’s an average display, it gets the job done but it would have been better if it had a Full HD display as it has a very large panel. The display doesn’t look sharp if the panel is big but the resolution is only HD.

Good Performance

• Mediatek Helio G70 (12 nm)
• Octa-core (2×2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 & 6×1.7 GHz Cortex-A55)
• Mali-G52 2EEMC2
• 128GB 4GB RAM

Infinix Note 7 has MediaTek Helio G70 chipset. It’s a 12nm chipset with Octa-core (2×2.0 GHz Cortex-A75 & 6×1.7 GHz Cortex-A55) CPU and Mali-G52 2EEMC2 GPU. To top it off it has 4GB RAM and 128GB internal storage.

The performance is smooth and I didn’t have any trouble while browsing and switching between multiple apps. The G80 does pretty well in daily usage. And, it does good while gaming as well.

I tested FreeFire and COD Mobile on the Infinix Note 7. FreeFire runs smoothly on a High graphic setting with max frame rate options. The gameplay is really good and I only noticed slight frame drops while switching to ads once in a while. Else, FreeFire runs very smoothly.

For COD mobile, you can play it in Medium graphic and high fps setting. The game ran smoothly and didn’t notice any major lags or stutters.

It’s easier for Note 7 to run games due to its HD panel as well. The G70 is a good chipset and on top of that, it doesn’t need to push as many pixels as it would have to if it had an FHD display.

But ofcourse, it’s not the best chipset you can get for the price. You can get Helio G85, G80 chipset on the likes of Redmi Note 9, and Redmi 9. But, there isn’t much difference between these chipsets.

Average Quad Cameras

• Rear Camera: 48 MP, f/1.8, (wide), 1/2.0″, 0.8µm, PDAF
  • 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro)
  • 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth)
  • AI camera
• Front Camera: 16 MP, f/2.0, 26mm (wide), 1/3.06″, 1.0µm

Infinix Note 7 has a quad-camera setup on the back and the camera module looks like the one on the Nokia 7.2.

The camera module houses a 48MP main sensor, a 2MP depth sensor, a 2MP macro sensor, and an AI camera. Then, it has a quad-LED flash right below the camera sensors. The camera module is also protected by Corning Gorilla Glass.

By default it captures 12MP photos and images look sharp under good lighting conditions with good brightness and warm colors. The colors are also a bit saturated than normal. But the images don’t’ look as good in the overcast situation. You can even notice a slight noise on the edges.

If you want more details, you can capture images at 48MP as well. This will make the images sharper and they retain more details. Surprisingly, you can also turn on HDR in 48MP mode. However, I was not impressed with its HDR. It loses details on the darker areas even in good lighting conditions.

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Then, we get a 2MP macro camera on the Note 7 which is not impressive. It’s only a 2MP sensor so there are not many details on the macro images. The macro shots don’t look appealing but you could use if for social media purposes.

Infinix Note 7 also has a portrait mode which does a fine job. Even though it’s only 2MP, it’s edge detection is quite good with a good background blur. But, it does tend to soften the images in challenging situations.

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The extra sensor is called an AI sensor and it works as a dedicated night video camera but only in 6GB RAM variant of Infinix Note 7. This variant is not available in Nepal.

About low light images, the night shots have noises and look blur as we expect. The night mode helps in controlling noise but the image still tends to have lots of noise and the images turn out dull. Its night mode performance is not good.

On the front, there’s a 16MP sensor for selfies. It retains good details in daylight conditions and the images turn out appealing. It even does a good job indoors with good enough details. However, it cannot hold up the quality in low-light conditions.

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For videos, Infinix Note 7 captures videos up to 1080p 30 fps. The videos are quite average as the details and dynamic range are not that good. The videos do not look sharp and you can notice noise even in daylight.

For stabilization, there’s an anti-video mode that crops the footages to give you stable footages. So, it suffers in quality to give you stabilized footage.

Impressive Battery

• Non-removable Li-Po 5000 mAh battery
• Fast charging 18W
• micro USB 2.0, USB On-The-Go

Infinix Note 7 has a 5000 mAH battery along with 18W fast charging. The battery is really good as it was getting about 8-9 hours of screen on time.

It’s stand by time is also good and you can easily get 1 and a half-day of usage even in the heavy use cases.

As for the charging, it takes about 2 hours 20 mins to charge it from 0 to 100.

Biometrics

The side-mounted fingerprint sensor is fast and consistent. I did not have any problem with the fingerprint sensor.

Then, you can also use face unlock which works well and is quite fast. It is not as reliable in dark conditions though.

Speaker

The stereo speaker on the Infinix Note 7 sounds average. It’s loud but the clarity is not that good in high frequency.

But, the stereo setup comes in really handy when playing games.

ALSO READ: Samsung Galaxy M21 Review: Value Packed Mid-Ranger

Software

• Android 10.0, XOS

Infinix Note 7 comes with its own XOS on top of Android 10. XOS is custom skin by Infinix which has a lot of pre-installed software.

There are lots of unnecessary software and games which are pre-installed. You can uninstall some of them and you should. There’s one software call Phoenix which cannot be uninstalled and gives you lots of notifications. So, if you use the Infinix Note 7, you will have to turn off some pesky notifications.

Except for the bloatware, XOS feels quite good. The OS is optimized as the animations are quite smooth. But it does need to improve its icons which look immature. Else, the experience was okay with the XOS.

Final Thoughts

Infinix Note 7 is a good budget phone that is priced at Rs. 21,990. I like how it performs and its main camera sensor is also nice.

Then, its battery is also really good. On top of that, it has a huge display. But, it should have had an FHD display at this price. Also, its macro sensor is not really useful. Instead, an ultrawide angle camera would have been a better choice.

So, it’s a good budget device but it’s slightly expensive than its competition like the Redmi Note 9. You can definitely go for this phone but it’s not the best at this price tag.

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