Infinix Zero 30 5G: The device that will change your perception of the Infinix brand

I have been using the Infinix Zero 30 5G for over a month now. It’s one smartphone that you’d love to own. Yes, including those of you who’ve always flocked to my mentions on Twitter every time I highlight a new Infinix device that is, in your opinion, priced outside the confines within which you expect an Infinix smartphone to be in.

Let me sum everything up a bit before delving into the specifics of this Zero 30 in my possession: the Infinix of 2023 – and of the last few years, if we are being honest – is very different from the Infinix you’ve had in your head. While Infinix has largely been known for making very affordable smartphones packing top-of-the-line features, it has overgrown that. It now makes smartphones that compete with just about any other top smartphone brand out there. They’re becoming that top smartphone brand that will be in your head when you go shopping for your next smartphone. There’s no bigger poster child of this ambition and its realization than the Zero 30 5G.

It’s an excellent smartphone inside and out.

The design, to kick things off, will blow you away. It’s one of my top five features on the device. It comes in three colours and they all influence the kind of back you get – soft touch with a gentle rubbery feel or a sturdy back that just slots in your palms effortlessly.

The curving display and the shiny metallic frame fit into that back so nicely making this device one that’s a pleasure to use naked i.e. without dressing it in any form of cover, something you may want to do if you want to keep the wobbling necessitated by that protruding camera housing at the back. The edges of the device are gently rounded so it’s not jutting into your palm at any point, something a device with flat pointed corners would do.

Obviously, there’s no headphone jack here and storage expansion is not possible but, hey, are those dealbreakers in this day and age? The former is largely the norm these days and the latter is taken care of by the plenty of storage (256GB) that Infinix packs on the Zero 30 5G. As such, none will be missed. When you are not using Bluetooth headsets to listen to sound coming from the device, you will appreciate the dual speaker setup on the device. It’s great. And, surprise, there’s none of that JBL tuning that we saw on the latest Note series smartphones. Instead, we have a “Powered by Infinix” inscription at the top of the device pointing to some in-house sound tuning. Excellent job!

The display is a delight to use indoors and outdoors. It’s bright (it has a peak brightness of 950 nits, after all) vivid, crisp and, according to Infinix, accurate (there’s DCI-P3 colour accuracy). The text is very clear and you don’t want to stop reading news articles or something else here. It’s also where you want to view the photos you take with it – more on that shortly. A refresh rate that goes all the way to 144Hz is just icing on the cake. Do you know how good a device has to be to say that about a 144Hz refresh rate? Something that you don’t normally see on smartphones let alone smartphones in the Zero 30 5G’s class and price? We are used to seeing a ceiling of 120Hz. That’s not the case here as Infinix has gone all out. And there’s Gorilla Glass 5 to offer protection to that precious 6.7-inch Full HD+ display.

The camera experience on the Infinix Zero 30 5G is front and centre of everything about this device. And, it is not hard to see why. Infinix has gone all out on both fronts. And, unlike previously when the photography experience has hogged all the attention and focus, this time round, while making it better, definitely, Infinix made sure that from now going forward, it is part and parcel of the videography conversation. Both the hero 108-megapixel camera at the back and the 50-megapixel unit on the front can shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second, at par with any smartphone worth its salt out there. And, from my own personal experience, the device delivers very well. For content creators, you know, vloggers and all, this is the device to get.

The 108-megapixel main camera has both optical image stabilization (OIS) and electronic image stabilization (EIS). Both ensure that all shake is eliminated and their main difference is in how they achieve that. While OIS is hardware-based (there’s movement in the physical equipment – the lens – as conditions demand), EIS is software-based with the phone’s accelerometer detecting movement and using that to align frames as needed.

These stabilization features especially come in handy when the lossless zoom the main lens supports is in use. Most details remain intact as you zoom in with digital noise kicking in only as you go farther.

Good ol’ snaps look just as great as you would expect. A great balance with the dynamic range during the day – the blues, surprise, are very much in line, with no greenish hue – and the details pop at night, especially in close-ups with distant (relative to the positioning of the lens) light sources.

Being the feature-packed device that it is, of course the cameras have lots of software features to make them usable in multiple situations. For instance, there are cinematic filters incorporated to give that whole cinema vibe in one’s shots. There’s the dual video feature that we have also seen on other devices like the Reno5 from Oppo as well.

Something built into the camera that I really appreciated is the automatic QR code reader. It’s still not the iPhone point-and-shoot level from the stock viewfinder but you can trigger it from the dropdown Quick Settings shortcuts menu that can be accessed with a simple swipe from the right side of the screen from the notification bar.

The same process allows one to access Folax Translate, one of our few encounters with what we’d traditionally consider bloat on an Android smartphone – you should be using Google Translate which is far superior and you likely already use. For those not in the know – since we have covered it previously – Folax is what Infinix calls the voice assistant on its devices. Transsion Group sibling Tecno calls its own take Ella. It is worth mentioning here because Infinix says that it is now powered by ChatGPT, the generative AI chatbot that has taken the world by storm since its debut late last year.

It’s one of those things that the device maker pushes your way and you can’t do anything about it. But, as we found out during the review period, you can live with that. You can use whatever else you prefer and close your world to these alternative options that may only make sense to the ordinary user who is neither adventurous nor invested in the Google ecosystem.

Importantly, Folax is one of the few bits of the software that sticks out. Unlike other Infinix smartphones we have used and reviewed in the past, the Zero 30 5G presents the cleanest software experience we have ever encountered on a Transsion Group device. XOS 13.1, which this device runs, is clean, a pleasure to use and focuses on the essentials instead of being a jack of all trades.

The AI smarts on the Zero 30 5G don’t end with Folax. There’s some of that magic baked into the AI Gallery app. It’s the same same app that you have probably encountered before on an older Infinix device but with some backroom updates to allow you to conduct a lot more searches in a lot more languages as you try to surface your photos. Think of it like the way you’d probably use Google Photos. It’s not much but, since we are always advocates of decent gallery apps and those that device makers usually pre-install just get the job done, why not?

There are also “AI-generated wallpapers” to boot, in case you don’t fancy Backdrops.

Underneath the beautiful design of the device lies the Dimensity 8020 chipset from MediaTek which is responsible for the overall buttery smooth performance of the device as well as the 5G network coverage users of the device get to enjoy through both Safaricom and Airtel Kenya where available. There’s nothing we have done over the past month that the Zero 30 5G couldn’t take. You can take it as your challenge to find something it won’t do. From editing short videos using CapCut and doing quick exports to some casual gaming, our idea of the kind of heavy workloads that the device may be subjected to by power users, it took everything in its stride. Yes, without any overheating.

Another core aspect of a device’s performance is its battery. On the Zero 30 5G, I found, I could comfortably squeeze a full day’s usage from the device frequently despite my varying use cases.

There were days when I wouldn’t subject the device to any stress as it would spend the day connected to my car’s infotainment system for use when navigating with Google Maps and fielding calls on the go thanks to the awesomeness of Android Auto (it projects effortlessly, by the way) and there would be days when it would be the only computer in my possession and would double up as a microphone for recordings, my projection device when making presentations on remote calls on top of the usual social media binging and the like.

And, when it all gets down to zero, worry not, the device’s 68W AllRound FastCharge comes to the rescue using the cable and charger that are included in the box to go from that state to 80% in just half an hour.

The lowdown

The Infinix Zero 30 5G is the best Infinix smartphone I have ever used, and that is without question. It is also likely to be the best experience on a smartphone that you can get from an Infinix at this time. We are in the era of foldables and whatnot but, the demand for the good ol’ candybar smartphone isn’t going away any time soon. And, until foldable smartphone prices can match what you can get the Zero 30 5G for, they are out of the question.

The Zero 30 5G offers you best-in-class 5G network access with no fuss, has a good design going for it (well, some will have choice words for that protruding back but, hey, to each their own) and, hands-down some of the best display experience in the market at its price as well as above-average performance and a software experience that is unlike anything you have encountered before from a Transsion device. Did I say that just a few weeks after penning the early draft of this review an iPhone-style “Dynamic Island”-like feature dropped on the device? Its execution is excellent. Even Tim Apple Cook would be impressed.

Should you ask for more? Definitely, there is always room for improvement but, right now, this is as good as it gets.