Of late, Infinix has one of the strongest offerings in the absolute budget or value for money segment. It’s new smartphone costs ₹14,999 for some strong specs. To give this phone it’s full name is only fair.
It’s Infinix Note 12 Turbo Dr Strange Marvel Edition. Yes indeed, phew. Well, the company partnered with Marvel Studios to position this device as one that gamers should opt for even if on an extremely tight budget.
AMOLED treat
A few years ago, we wouldn’t bother reviewing absolute budget phones, they were that bad. Terrible screens, cheap looking plastic, lag everywhere, and fairly pathetic cameras. This isn’t the case nowadays. You wouldn’t have thought to get an AMOLED screen at this price, but the 6.7 inch FHD+ display is and while it’s not the dazzler you’ll see on more expensive phones, it’s a far cry from an LCD with angles that wash out everything.
Its refresh rate is only 60Hz but it was inevitable that in the balance, one would lose some features and gain others. Its brightness peaks at a 1,000 nits, which again is not bad for a budget phone. It also has a 180Hz touch sampling rate and Widevine L1 support.
The display has a thinnish bezels but the lower bezel is asymmetrically thicker. There’s a notch rather than a punch hole and that gives the display a slight dated look, but one can live with it as it’s quite small.
The front panel is protected by Gorilla Glass 3 and it comes with a screen protector. The phone has a 3.5mm jack at the bottom — again, asymmetrical and looking as if it’ll fall off, but at least it’s there. There are two speakers that are quite loud.
This phone is a bit tall and broad. It may not be the most comfortable in smaller hands, but young large-handed people who fully plan on going landscape and gaming or watching movies should be just fine with this device.
The back panel is very prominently plastic, as expected, and has a nice swirly pattern. It does show finger smudges, but there’s a case that will solve that problem. There’s a large camera square, as is the trend these days. The phone is light and slim, despite its 5,000 mAh battery.
RAM for the buck
The Note 12 Turbo runs on the MediaTek Helio G96, a budget level SoC. It works with 8GB RAM, quite atypical for this price category, and 128GB storage. The phone performs quite well and doesn’t really feel low or show any stutters, but of course a 90Hz or more display would have made it feel a lot faster.
There’s a fingerprint sensor built into the power button and while not blazingly fast, it’s fast enough to do the job pretty well.
Not once did I find the phone pausing to take in indeed rejecting my fingerprint (when it was the wrong one). It even has a memory card slot for an extra 512GB. The phone has a big 5,000mAh battery with 33W charging, but charging is slow although battery life is pretty good.
For a budget phone, the Note 12 Turbo actually comes with Android 12 and hats off to it for doing so. The interface that Infinix uses is XOS which is very feature filled but has a few too many native unwanted apps.
Still, the third party ones are not as many as others come with. The interface could do with some polish and intuitiveness and one finds some options missing, such as being able to increase the display size. But it does have Magnification for those who need it.
The cameras are not scraping the bottom of the barrel, if that’s what you expected. The primary camera is a 50MP and a 2MP depth lens and QVGA AI lens. It takes quite nice pics, including indoors and has a ‘Supernight’ mode. It even allows for 2K video shooting.
The front camera is a 16MP. Overall, the setup is pretty good for the price. And that’s something one can say for this smartphone, overall.