To break the monotony of LCD-powered smartphones under Rs. 10,000, Infinix has launched the Note 12i in India that flaunts an AMOLED display. But that’s not the only thing that matters on a smartphone, right? So, the Infinix Note 12i also packs a Mediatek Helio G85 chipset, a 50-megapixel triple camera setup, a dual-tone design on the back, 33W charging, and much more.
Infinix Note 12i
Rs 10,499
What Is Good?
- Stylish dual-tone design
- Average performance
- Good selfie camera
- Decent battery life
- 33W fast charging
What Is Bad?
- Average rear cameras
- Lacklustre software
On paper, the device provides great value for a smartphone at its price, but how does it perform in the real world? We have been using the device for a couple of weeks now, and here’s our review.
Infinix Note 12i Review: Design
The Infinix Note 12i looks good and feels premium for a budget smartphone. It features a dual-tone design on the back, with the upper portion having a glossy finish and the rest of its body sporting a matte texture. Its vertical rear camera module creates an illusion that it houses four cameras, but don’t be fooled. There are just three sensors with an LED flash.
It is one of the sleekest devices at this price, with a thickness of 7.8mm and a weight of 188 grams. Despite the boxy lines, it’s comfortable to hold and fits easily in a tight jeans pocket.
The Infinix Note 12i comes in three colours: Force Black, Alpine White, and Metaverse Blue. We received the black variant with a glittery pattern on its back for review. However, if you prefer something vibrant, we recommend you check out the other two variants.
The phone’s back is made of polycarbonate, which seems to be of average quality. It does not pick up fingerprints or smudge marks easily.
Talking about its physical features, the bottom of the phone has a Type-C port, a mic, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a speaker grille. The left part houses a full-size SIM slot that has a dedicated slot for a microSD card, whereas the right frame has volume rockers and a power button-cum-fingerprint scanner. We like the fact that Infinix has placed the fingerprint sensor slightly down, which is more convenient. Other manufacturers should take note.
Overall, the design of the Infinix Note 12i is appealing in its segment, and the build quality is decent.
Infinix Note 12i Review: Display
The Infinix Note 12i brings a Full HD+ AMOLED display for under Rs. 10,000. Yes, you heard that right. It’s a tall display, spanning 6.7 inches diagonally, that refreshes at 60Hz. Given its AMOLED credentials, it’s vibrant, crisp and clear with good contrast. Unfortunately, Infinix has not provided any option to customise the colour profile, but we feel you wouldn’t need it. Watching YouTube videos was fun, but the highest Netflix or Prime Video resolution it could attain was SD because it’s only Widevine L3 certified.
Infinix claims the screen can reach a peak brightness of 1000 nits, which punches way above its weight. As a result, it’s really easy to use the display in harsh sunlight.
But, if you were to take a look at the bigger picture, its rivals offer higher refresh rates at the expense of an IPS or TFT LCD display. Further, the bezels around the sides and chin eat up much of the screen’s real estate and appear a bit dated. We are a bit bummed by this, simply because the Note 12i’s cousin, the Hot 20 Play, has a hole-punch display.
The single bottom-firing speaker gets really loud but lacks depth. It is excellent for watching movies but if you are listening to music or doing some serious online gaming, you must pick up your earphones.
Infinix Note 12i Review: Performance & software
At the heart of the Note 12i is a MediaTek Helio G85 chipset, which powers more phones in the budget segment than there are people with MacBooks at Starbucks. It is available in a single configuration with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Furthermore, it supports 3GB Virtual RAM technology, which means that it will take out some storage from the onboard storage to use as RAM. You can also expand its storage capacity by up to 512GB using a microSD card.
Although the performance specs seem decent on paper, we think Infinix could have offered another variant with 6GB of RAM for better performance.
Jitters were common while navigating across the UI and performing basic tasks, such as scrolling through social media apps, and felt sluggish. This is the case with most budget smartphones, and we wish the power could have been optimised better, but at this price, we really can’t expect much, can we?
There was a slight delay when opening apps or games on the Infinix Note 12i, and the device struggled when managing Google Chrome and YouTube in split-screen mode.
In terms of benchmarks, the Infinix Note 12i achieved a respectable score of 208892. On Geekbench v5, it posted a single-core score of 365 and a multi-core score of 1437.
For comparison, the year-old Realme C33 (review), with a Unisoc T612 processor secured an AnTuTu score of 209418.
The gaming performance of the Note 12i was satisfactory, with no issues when playing PUBG: New State on High graphics and High frame rates. There was hardly any noticeable drop in frame rates during gameplay, although the device began to heat up after a 30-40 minute session.
Playing Call of Duty: Mobile too was a walk in the park at Medium graphics quality and High frame rate settings. We also played a few simulation games that ran smoothly.
For biometrics, the device has face and fingerprint unlock, which respond swiftly.
The software situation on the Note 12i was a bit disappointing, however.
The device boots Android 12 and runs Infinix’s XOS skin. The security patch was also a bit outdated, that of November 2022 and the update situation of the device is also unclear, and there is no fixed timeline on when it would receive the Android 13 update.
In comparison, the Moto E13 (review) runs Android 13 Go edition out-of-the-box, with a clear update timeline despite selling at a lower price.
Upon setting up the device, we saw several bloatware, including AHA Gamers, Boomplay, Wezone, Sharpnews, etc. Unfortunately, only a few of them could be uninstalled, and these apps also bombarded us with annoying notifications.
However, the device also came with several useful features that can be enabled within settings. For example, the Smart Sidebar feature provides quick access to apps and shortcuts with a simple swipe from the edge, similar to what we see in Samsung smartphones. Additionally, the Multi-Window mode lets you use apps in the picture-in-picture (PiP) mode, although there are several apps that do not take advantage of this. Besides these, there were features such as Social turbo, Game Mode, XClone, Video Assistant, Kids Mode, and much more that users could access by going to the phone’s settings.
Infinix Note 12i Review: Battery and charging
The Infinix Note 12i packs a beefy 5,000mAh battery unit with support for 33W charging. The charger is bundled with the box.
The battery life of the device was commendable, as it lasted us for one and a half days. Our usage consisted of casual gaming, social media scrolling, a bit of camera work, browsing, and watching videos on YouTube. We obtained a screen time of over seven hours, indicating good battery life.
During our test, the device took one hour and 41 minutes to charge the battery from 4% to 100%. Although this was a long time, it was consistent with the trend in this segment, so there was no reason to complain.
Infinix Note 12i Review: Camera
The 50-megapixel primary camera is the only thing that matters on the back of Note 12i, simply because accompanying this is a 2-megapixel depth and a QVGA camera. An LED flash on the back is also placed like an additional sensor. The device relies on an 8-megapixel front-facing camera for selfies and video calls.
Interacting with the camera is easy, as the UI is subtle and straightforward and includes various modes like Portrait, Beauty, AI cam, Panorama, AR shot mode, 50MP, Documents, Slow motion, Pro, film, Time-lapse, and even a short video mode. Here are some pictures that we took with the Infinix Note 12i.
The 50-megapixel primary sensor captures decent shots in natural daylight but adds a yellowish tint to a few pictures. The images are not crisp, but they have an okay amount of detail. In indoor conditions, the images turn out to be soft and have faded colours.
In low-light conditions, the pictures have a lot of noise and fewer details. The Super Night mode controls the light well, but it sometimes over-sharpens the images.
The Infinix Note 12i struggles to control the dynamic range. In natural sunlight, it overexposes the light a lot. In the picture below, you can see how the background around the leaves is completely blown out. Turning HDR on controls the light and makes the image more usable.
Selfies captured by the 8-megapixel sensor turned out to be good enough to upload on social media. The skin tone comes out to be natural in daylight. There’s also a portrait mode on the front whose edge detection could have been better, but overall, it does the job well. Selfies clicked in low light were decent with some noise, but using the Super Night mode fixed that.
Most phones in this segment have a video resolution limit of 1080p, but the Infinix Note 12i can shoot videos in 2K resolution at 30 fps, both on the front and rear cameras. While the videos were shaky, the video and audio quality was decent.
Infinix Note 12i Review: Verdict
The Infinix Note 12i sets a positive precedent by offering an AMOLED panel under Rs. 10,000. So, if you desire a phone with a large, vibrant display for media consumption, casual gaming, a long-lasting battery, fast charging, and a decent selfie camera, the Infinix Note 12i can be a viable option.
We could excuse the rear camera performance, as it’s a budget phone after all, but the lack of commitment to updates can be problematic for potential buyers.
If you had to look at the alternatives, the year-old Moto G31, Realme C33 and Redmi 10 still stand strong against the Note 12i, except for a few outdated features.
