Infinix Note 40 Pro review: A hot Note

Sleek, curvy, suave. Those three words aptly describe the Infinix smartphone that I have had for a month: the Infinix Note 40 Pro that Infinix officially launched locally at the end of last month.

However, as you will see in this written review and the embedded video review above, that’s not all there is to this device. There is so much more.

Design and display

It’s a large device by all means with its curvy and dotting 6.78-inch AMOLED panel and it does feel large but its thinness and overall good finish make it slide easily into your palm when you’re using it. It even feels better when you slap the cover that’s included in the box which has a soft touch material that you can find on other colour options on the device. The Titan Gold colour model that I have been reviewing, it has this nice shimmery back which makes handling even better.

Depending on which colour option you get, the texture on the back of the device will vary, as already highlighted above. From my experience, it doesn’t really matter which colour you go with in this regard. It will matter mostly when it comes to the looks. The green is much easier on the eyes while the gold pops and is very loud.

One of the things one notices quickly on this device besides the display – which we are getting to in a bit – is the JBL sound tuning which is evidenced by the tuning up top (and the sound is actually good if we are to jump the gun and get there). Then there’s the IR blaster. Yes, an infrared blaster on an Infinix device, a first! It’s a nice touch. I just wish they had it integrated straight out of the box instead of requiring one to have to download the additional Welife app, Infinix’s own Google Home style app whose usage extends to smarthome devices and wearables like smartwatches, smartbands, earphones and the likes beyond the TV/AV system management you’ll be turning to it for.

The display is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass making it less prone to scratches and, even if you dropped and shattered it, Infinix should come through with a replacement at no extra cost to you if that’s within the first 6 months of purchase. Infinix has upped its after-sales service game.

Infinix has been on the up and up regarding its displays for a while now and, as a result, there are no surprises here. The expansive curved display peaks at 120Hz refresh rate and, most importantly, goes all the way up to 1,300 nits of brightness. It’s quite bright. Exactly the kind of bright you need when you’re making a tour of the equatorial areas of the East African region as I was for a week while reviewing the Note 40 Pro.

Cameras

The Infinix Note 40 Pro takes some exquisite photos. The colour reproduction is great on the automatic mode using the default AI Cam and I can only imagine how far you can take it if you engage the Pro mode and choose your own shutter speed, white balance, ISO and the likes. I never ventured there because I never needed to. Right out of the box, I was able to get what I needed. Everything was well balanced. There were no cases of overexposure, oversaturation or some finicky HDR. Everything was just okay. Even the portrait mode.

Here are some sample photos taken on the Infinix Note 40 Pro:

As is always the case on Android Kenya, the images have been resized in order to save on space.

As you can see in the video review embedded above, even the videos did come through nicely. While I have only included the vlog-style video shot with the 32-megapixel front-facing camera, trust me, the 108-megapixel tri-camera system at the back is just as good. The optical image stabilization (OIS) is worth it.

Software and performance

Infinix says that the Note 40 Pro can keep up to 25 apps in memory meaning that you can always pick up from where you left and not have to worry about losing progress in whatever you were doing. That is nice to know and speaks to both the device’s hardware capabilities (RAM and chipset) and the optimization done to XOS 14, the customized version of Android 14 the device runs on.

App launches were always a breeze during the review period.

Honestly, having interacted with the Infinix Note 40 Pro, I don’t know what else there is to say about its performance. It is so good. It handled everything I threw at it so well.

As we have seen with the last few Infinix devices we have interacted with here at Android Kenya, there’s a difference. It is not the XOS from a year or two ago. It’s a completely different experience. More of the pre-installed applications can be uninstalled and, remember those many annoying notifications that used to define the XOS experience? Gone! Gone with the wind. I have seen whiffs of several misinformed comments on social media (especially X) regarding the same and I have been wondering if I am using a different device or what is happening.

That aside, there are lots of thoughtful tweaks across the entire device. For instance, the Infinix take on Apple’s Dynamic Island, called Magic Ring, slots right in and is very useful. Like when picking calls and the like. Talking about calls, you get this nice overlay when you pick up calls as you do other things on your phone.

Battery and charging

AllRound FastCharge v2.0 as Infinix calls it, is a big part of the Note 40 series, not just the Note 40 Pro, identity.

For those not in the know, AllRound FastCharge is the universal terminology for the technologies deployed by Infinix to ensure fast, efficient and safe charging of its devices. In the case of the Note 40 Pro, this is largely driven by the Cheetah X1, Infinix’s first self-developed power management chip, which allows it to perform all it needs in order to have users of its devices enjoying fast charging whether wired or wireless while also not running the risk of damaging their battery units and/or having the batteries die sooner, having their phones ruined/exploding or handling phones that are heating up a lot when in extreme usage situations or while charging.

Infinix has gone ahead and replicated what we saw it do with the VIP Racing Edition of the Note 40’s predecessor, the Note 30, by including a wireless charging pad, dubbed MagPad, with the packaging of the Note 40 Pro (refer to our unboxing video).

The 20W MagPad charger does a good job complementing the 70W wired charger which also comes in the box of the Infinix Note 40 Pro. A 20-minute charge using the wired charger when the device is entirely flat, gets you to the halfway mark. If you switch to the Hyper mode since you have three charging modes, you get there at least 4 minutes early. Infinix says that a 5-minute top-up allows you to use your phone for navigation purposes (hello Android Auto peeps) for over 2 hours, for calls for over 9 hours and for over 5 hours when just watching videos.

There are other options as well like reverse charging (both wired and wireless) and bypass charging, which lets you charge up the device when it is under heavy use (like in gaming) directly through its motherboard, sparing its battery any resulting degradation and keeping true Infinix’s promise of over 1,600 charging cycles.

Others

The Infinix Note 40 Pro has an IP54 rating. It is lower than the IP68 that’s become standard on other devices but pretty much par the course for a device in the Note 40 Pro’s class. It offers a limited level of water resistance, basically, the device is splashproof and protected against dust up to a certain level.