Infinix Zero 20 reviewCan be your next budget purchase

By Divya BhatiThe budget smartphone segment is dominated by brands like Oppo, Vivo, Samsung, Realme. Then there are also some growing companies like Infinix that are in a race to offer exciting budget devices to Indian consumers. Infinix entered the Indian market in 2017 and within 6 years of its presence it has managed to get some market share in the budget section. The Infinix Zero 20 is one of the latest offerings from the brand, which is also a budget alternative of the premium offering – the Infinix Zero Ultra.

The Infinix Zero 20 claims to be a good option for users who are looking for a good camera and battery phone. The smartphone, which is priced at Rs 16,999, features a 108-megapixel ultra resolution camera, an AMOLED cinematic display, fast charging support and a dozen other features that call for attention. While the Infinix Zero 20 looks quite good on paper, is it the same when it comes to real life performance? Is it one of the best smartphones in the Rs 18000 price segment? I used the phone for about 4 weeks and here’s what I think.

Infinix Zero 20 design, build

Infinix is improving its design game with every phone it is launching in India. This was the first thought I had when I unboxed the Zero 20. The smartphone comes in three colour options – Space Gray, Glitter Gold and Green Fantasy. The company sent the black colour variant to India Today Tech for review, and I kind of like how it looks.

One of the key highlights of this phone, in my opinion, is its design. For its price, the phone looks extremely stylish, in fact, to a large extent it takes design cues from the latest iPhone models. The phone features a boxy design, which looks premium for the price, but what caught my attention is the matte-finished back panel. The good thing is that the rear panel doesn’t register fingerprints, which means you can use the phone without a cover.

On the side, the phone includes metal frames with mirror finish design, but overall it offers a solid grip. There’s the power button on the right side, which also doubles as a fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone. However, I would have liked it if Infinix offered an in-display fingerprint sensor. At the bottom, there are several connectivity options including – 3.5mm audio jack, Type-C port for charging, speaker grill, and also a microphone hole.

While most phones in the price segment offer a similar kind of design, Infinix goes out of its way to offer something new. The Infinix Zero 20 includes two giant camera lenses, one small lens coupled with LED flashlight, which sits in a square matte-finished island complementing the matte-finished rare panel. All the camera sensors sit inside a large square-shaped module. Overall, the phone offers a simple and clean design, and I really liked that bit about the Zero 20. Furthermore, the Infinix Zero 20 is lightweight, so much that I had no issue using the phone with one hand all through the day. To be specific, the phone weighs around 196g.

Coming to the front, the Zero 20 offers a large AMOLED display with a water drop notch, unlike the Ultra model which comes with a punch hole design. Honestly, I am not a big fan of water drop design because it occupies some part of the screen and in turn also impacts the multimedia experience. It would have been better if Infinix would have opted for a hole punch design, which takes a lot less space.

Overall, I liked the matte finish design of the Infinix Zero 20 as it feels premium for the price it comes for.

Infinix Zero 20 display

The Infinix Zero 20 comes packed with a 6.7-inch FHD+ AMOLED display with 90hz screen refresh rate. The company claims that the Zero 20 has a display that offers an “immersive cinematic” feel, and I am impressed with its display given the price range.

Over the last few weeks, I used the Infinix Zero 20 to watch YouTube, stream movies and shows on various OTT platforms like Netflix, and found the phone to perform decently even in HD settings. In gaming too, I observed that the Infinix Zero 20 did not pixelate the graphics, and the images and fonts appeared detailed and sharp. The display’s brightness was impressive and also handled bright light well, meaning you can easily use the phone under the sun. Additionally, the colours also looked quite real and vibrant. Be it in watching movies, TV shows, or simply scrolling through social media feeds, the Infinix Zero 20’s display will surely provide a vivid and engaging user experience.

As for the picture quality of the Infinix Zero 20, I found the colours accurate and the blacks deep, offering a good picture quality overall. Additionally, the display is bright enough to be used outdoors in direct sunlight, which is a handy feature for users who frequently use their phones outside.

When it comes to the colours specifically, the Infinix Zero 20 does not disappoint either. The display offers a wide range of colours, resulting in an enjoyable viewing experience overall. Bet it in watching movies, TV shows, or simply scrolling through your social media feed, the Infinix Zero 20’s display is sure to provide a vivid and engaging experience.

Infinix Zero 20 performance, software

The Infinix Zero 20 is powered by the MediaTek Helio G99 chipset coupled with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, with support for external storage up to 2TB. Now, being an Infinix phone I expected some issues in the performance bit, but the phone surprised me. It clearly appears that the company is going out of its way to match up with its competitors.

The Infinix Zero 20 handles day-to-day tasks pretty smoothly. I used the phone to watch movies, play games, browse the web, and click photos, and in all situations, the device offered really smooth performance without any lag. The phone didn’t lag even while playing basic games like Among Us and what is even better is that the phone didn’t heat up even after extensive gaming sessions. However, I must mention that the phone sometimes struggled to run heavy GPU games such as PUBG New State or Call of Duty. So, when I played such heavy games on the Infinix phone, I often had to make adjustments to the settings by lowering the resolution. So, it was evident that the Infinix Zero 20 did a good job for regular smartphone users, but it was not for avid gamers out there.

The phone also does a good job when it comes to audio performance. So, it simply means that you will love watching movies or your favourite Netflix shows or even listening to songs on YouTube on the Infinix Zero 20. The bottom-placed speakers offer distinct and clear sound performance, which honestly isn’t available in a lot of smartphones in this price segment.

On the software front, the phone runs on Android 12 topped with the company’s custom skip – XOS 12. The phone comes with a lot of bloatware that bothers me. Just like most entry level phones these days, this mid-range budget phone also comes with a lot of unnecessary apps, — Although some of these apps can be deleted, the remaining apps can only be disabled, resulting in them still occupying valuable storage space on the device. This can be frustrating for users who prefer to have more control over the apps and content on their phones.

Another thing that I didn’t like in this phone is the lack of 5G support. The phone supports 3G, 4G, VoLTE, Wi-Fi, and NFC. Now, most smartphone manufacturers are fighting the 5G battle and launching one 5G phone after another. I expected the same from Infinix. This brings me to the most asked question – should you not have a 4G phone right now? Well, you still can buy a 4G phone, but you may not be able to use it for longer since telecom operators like Jio and Airtel have already launched their 5G services in 500+ Indian cities.

Infinix Zero 20 battery

The Infinix Zero 20 comes with a 4500mAh battery with support for 45W fast charging, and the good thing is that the fast charging comes bundled in the box. So, how is the battery performance? AnswerI really liked it. The phone fully charged from 0 to 100 in around 1 hour and 15 minutes using the proprietary charger. On a single charge, the phone was easily able to last more than one full day with all the daily usage. So, if you are looking for a phone with a good battery and fast charging support, the Infinix Zero 20 will not disappoint.

Infinix Zero 20 camera

Infinix Zero 20 offers a triple rear camera setup consisting of a 108-megapixel primary sensor, a 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. On the front the smartphone offers a single front camera setup for selfies, featuring a 60-megapixel sensor. Now, on paper, the phone camera looks quite impressive but is it good in real life as well?
I used the Infinix Zero 20 to click various kinds of photos in different lighting situations. The phone camera turned out to be average, great in some instances and not-so-good in few. I travelled to Rishikesh with the phone and discovered that it captures good landscape photos. In the river view shot (see below), the phone captured the true colour of the sky and clouds and waves in the river looked well detailed. The details of trees on the mountains and the temple view are also all beautifully clubbed to give wallpaper worthy shots.

In portrait mode too, the phone managed to capture details of the background and kept the colour tone natural. The HDR mode deserves a mention here, as it is good and shows the details in photographs clearly. The 20X zoom is also decent and captures fairly good amounts of details, if not great. I also liked the selfies that the phone clicks as it captures good details, mostly in good lighting conditions. Now, if you click selfies in limited light, you may not like them too much.

One of the best things about the rear camera is its low-light performance. I absolutely loved it. In almost all low-light photos, the phone was able to capture details as well as colours very well, which is really impressive for a phone in this price range. Now, check out the photo of the building shot during dusk and you will be able to see all the details of the windows and balconies. In fact, even the tree leaves look very well-detailed and the colours also appear accurate-like (see photo below). So, in my opinion, Infinix has done a great job by improving its low-light camera performance.

While the Infinix phone gets most of the major things right, there are few areas which I believe the company can improve through future software updates. I didn’t quite like the AI sensing since it over-saturated photos a way too much, especially greens and reds. For instanceyou can see the phone of leaves and the over-saturated green colour.

Another thing that the camera struggles in is with the bokeh mode and also there are issues with the focus. I had a tough time getting a focused shot instantly, so every time I wanted to capture a flower or any other subject, I had to keep the phone stable and touch the screen multiple times to get a nice-looking focused shot. Now, portrait shots looked decent but the edge detection wasn’t all that great. And this is the case in almost all lighting conditions. I also missed a macro lens in this one.

Infinix is touting the video capabilities of the Infinix Zero 20. And I must agree, it does a good job. Most of the videos I shot with the phone were able to capture a large amount of details and colours, and the stability is also quite decent.

All in all, Infinix has done a fairly good job in the camera department making the Zero 20 stand well against the competition.

Infinix Zero 20 reviewShould you buy?

After spending weeks using the Infinix Zero 20, I feel the company has done a pretty decent job. Overall, I do believe that the smartphone can easily be one of the best in the under Rs 20,000 price segment. However, not to forget that this segment is competitive and Infinix will need to offer regular software updates and improve performance and camera overtime to attract more and more consumers.

I really liked the matte finish design of the Infinix Zero 20 and also the fact that it is super lightweight, which also makes it extremely easy to use the phone with one hand. The Zero 20 also manages casual gaming well, and also the camera performance also turns out to be average with few areas for improvement. I also liked the low-light camera performance, and feel it is better than many other competition devices. So, kudos to Infinix for that! The phone also offers pretty good battery life but the software could have been less cluttered, I believe.

So, if you are looking for a good, all-rounder 4G smartphone, the Infinix Zero 20 is a pretty good option to consider. But if you want a 5G supported phone, there are plenty of other options available in the market in the similar price segment.