Infinix Smart 5A Review: The Best Entry-Level Android Smartphone

Infinix has come up with a new entry-level smartphone in the form of Infinix Smart 5A in India. The phone comes with a Jio exclusive offer that effectively reduces the price. It features an HD+ display, 5000 mAh battery, dual rear camera setup, and a MediaTek Helio A20 SoC. If we talk about the price, the smartphone has been launched in India with a price tag of Rs. 6,999 for a single storage variant offering 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. The phone is available in three colour options: Midnight Black, Ocean Wave, and Quetzal Cyan. But whether this budget-friendly smartphone is a good choice or not, let’s find out.

Infinix Smart 5A is priced at Rs. 6,999 and you also get a discount from Reliance Jio of Rs. 550 which will be credited to your UPI account directly once the return period is over. The phone comes in only one variant that features 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage and is available in three colors like Ocean Wave, Midnight Black, and Quetzal. The phone will be sold directly via Flipkart initially and later at some of the offline retail stores as well.

Infinix Smart 5A includes the following inside the box:

• Infinix Smart 5A handset
• Protective Case
• Screen Protector
• 10W Charging Adapter 
• USB-A to Micro-USB cable
• Documentation

Let’s talk about the on-paper specifications of the Google Pixel 5A at first:

• Display: 6.52 inches HD+ LCD IPS  Display with 1560 x 720 pixel resolution 
• Camera: 8MP | 8MP Front Camera with dual LED
• Battery: 5000 mAh Battery
• Chipset: MediaTek Helio A20 Processor
• RAM & ROM: 2GB RAM | 32GB ROM
• Dimensions: 165.5 x 76.4 x 8.75 mm
• Weight: 183 grams

If we talk about the design, the phone features a 6.52-inch display which is smaller compared to its predecessor Smart 5 that features a slightly bigger 6.82-inch display. The back has a plastic body with a gradient feel, which the company calls ‘Prism Flow Design’. It certainly doesn’t offer a premium sense but looks attractive in design. The phone is neither too thick nor too heavy, and it is easy to use with one hand. However, because of its back panel, the phone is a little bit slippery, and you might find it hard to handle for the first few days.

It has a somewhat basic design at the rear with a fingerprint sensor in the center and a dual-camera setup in a rectangular module slightly raised at the left side on the top. The fingerprint sensor is in an ideal position which makes it easy to access for everyone. As usual, because of its gradient-like shiny design, the back panel attracts many fingerprints and smudges. The phone does come with a transparent case in the box like all the smartphones today do and which is a good thing considering the price of this device.

The sim tray exists on the left side of the device, and on the right side, you will find the power button and volume buttons. Both the buttons are easy to reach and tactile in feedback. There is nothing on the top; you will find the 3.5 mm headphone jack primary microphone, micro-USB port for charging, and a speaker grill at the bottom of the phone. The micro USB port is a bit of a letdown, considering that most smartphones come with a USB type-c port.

The 6.52-inch HD+ IPS LCD display of Infinix Smart 5A and has a resolution of 1560 by 720. Similar to many budget smartphones, the screen has a waterdrop notch at the top. The bezels are pretty slim on the sides which I really like, while it is a bit thick at the chin of the device. The phone also has a dual flash set up in front for your nighttime selfies located in the top bezel. The display comes with an aspect ratio of 20:9, and it reaches a peak brightness of 500 nits that is good for indoors but insufficient in broad daylight. 

The display does struggle to provide decent viewing angles in direct sunlight. Also due to the lack of a higher refresh rate and a good processor you might have to struggle playing games that demand high-performance display. But this is an entry-level device and you can’t expect features from devices that cost double the price of this.

Under the hood, the Smart 5A features a MediaTek Helio A20 quad-core processor which is based on a 12nm process. As we mentioned, the smartphone comes with only 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, which is not that much for today’s power-hungry apps. You can expand the memory up to 256 GB as the phone comes with a dedicated MicroSD card slot.

Also, the smartphone performs quite decent on the benchmark front. I tested the device on the 3D Mark slingshot benchmark and there it managed to score 417 points on single-core it manages to get 124 points and on multicore, it manages to score 415 points. Talking about the Work 3.0 performance, the Smart 5A gets 4,489 points. 

In terms of day-to-day performance, the smartphone appears to be a bit laggy. You have to wait a few seconds for apps to load, which is longer than usual. Multitasking on the phone with 2GB RAM is certainly not good due to the same issue. The fingerprint scanner and face recognition also take a little longer to unlock the phone. But with this price tag, there is nothing to complain about the performance.

With the current RAM and storage configuration, the phone is certainly not a good pick for gaming because it takes quite a long time to load apps. I tried playing BGMI and COD Mobile on the smart 5A and it took a considerable amount of time to load. There was a frequent lag and often stutter in the settings especially in dense areas of the map. However casual games run fine on the phone without any frame drops or issues. 

You can forget about playing a graphic intensive game on the phone, such as Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI). So, the phone is a good choice if you are a casual gamer and play light games such as Subway Surfers, Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, etc. on the device.

In terms of software, Smart 5A comes with Android 11 (Go Edition), and on top of it, it has the custom UI from Infinix in the form of XOS 7.6. This is the Android go edition and is considered best for smartphones that are launched with limited RAM.

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Infinix Smart 5A comes with quite a lot of pre-installed bloatware apps, some of these apps are Palm Store, Hi Browser, AHA Games, Hi Translate and a lot more apps. Most of these apps are just replacements for their respective Google Apps and these have too many spammy notifications as well. The best thing I did was to uninstall or Disable all these apps the first day I started reviewing the device.

Apart from all these bloatware apps and features, there are some valuable features, such as WhatsApp mode, which allows you to access data from WhatsApp Messenger. You will also find a smart panel that can come in handy and be accessed from any screen.

Let’s talk about another important feature that is the camera of the Infinix Smart 5A phone. The phone has a very basic dual camera setup with an 8MP primary sensor and a secondary depth sensor for your portrait shots. For selfies, you have an 8-megapixel front camera in the waterdrop notch paired with two selfie flashlights in the top bezel. The camera app on the phone is straightforward and has just a couple of options to shoot photos or videos. The camera app features smart AI scene detection mode, HDR, Beauty, Bokeh, and Panorama mode to choose from.

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Performance-wise the shots taken in broad daylight are very quiet average and lack dynamic range and details. Close-up shots of certain objects were good with decent details. The pictures taken in low-light conditions like indoors were below average. Also, the smartphone lacks night mode in the camera app. 

Now for your selfies, you might have a good experience in average daylight but not in low light conditions. Despite having dual LED flashlights, the output of the front camera in low light is overexposed. When it comes to video recording, it is quite average and does provide good results even in daylight condition.

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One of the strongest points of the Infinix Smart 5A is its 5000mah battery, which is the company’s selling point. You can easily go on for nearly two days with moderate usage on this big battery. The phone comes with a 10W charger in the box to get your phone from 0- 20% battery in just 30 minutes of charging. But because of its big battery and slow charging rate, it takes more than 2 hours to charge the phone entirely. When tested the phone lasted for 15 hours and 5 minutes in my HD video loop test.

So all it can be said is that the device does not disappoint in terms of battery life. The battery life is very well optimized and for the price point of this device, the battery scores a bonus point.

Infinix Smart 5A does include a 3.5 mm audio jack which can come in handy during media consumption and casual gaming sessions. Apart from that there is also a fingerprint scanner that you can use to secure your device and it might not be one of the fastest but is not also the slowest fingerprint scanner that you may find in any device.

The audio quality is average and you can watch movies through the speaker but it struggles to keep the voice clear on high volume. Therefore conference calls through loudspeakers might not be a good option with this smartphone. If you do want to enjoy the audio quality of this device as suggest you buy good quality wired or wireless earphones.

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Similar to many other phones you also get the option to unlock the phone using your face. During the testing period, I found the face ID is the easiest way to unlock the phone but it might not be the safest option to keep your phone secure. So instead of using the face ID, it is recommended to use the fingerprint sensor provided in the back of the device.

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