by The Infinix Zero Ultra comes from a smartphone maker that many UK and US users may have never heard of. The China-based manufacturer has made a splash in other parts of the world, however, where the sight of very attractive camera specifications at reasonable prices has helped the company gain a foothold, so the market for UK emerging.
Infinix Zero Ultra: key specifications
Chipset: Dimension Mediatek 920 (6 nm)
RAM: 8GB
Storage: 256GB
OS: Android 12, XOS 12
Screen: AMOLED, 6.8in waterfall screen, 1080 x 2400px
Cameras: 200 MP f/2.0, (wide), 1/1.22″ 0.64µm, Dual Pixel PDAF, OIS 13 MP f/2.4, (ultrawide), AF 2 MP (macro), 32 MP f/2.0 (front)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth, USB Type-C 2.0, NFC
Dimensions: 165.5 x 74.5 x 8.8 mm
Weight: 213g (7.51oz)
Battery: Li-Po 4500 mAh, non-removable
And what are these main figures: 200MP main camera with 1/1.22″ portrait camera, macro-cam and 32MP front-facing selfie camera, with Super Night mode that promises to capture night shots in a quality that surpasses the best. Samsung and Apple (the main camera has the same pixel figure as the newly released Samsung Galaxy S23, for example).
Along with super-fast 180W charging, a 6.8-inch widescreen AMOLED waterfall screen and plenty of power, you’ve got the chance to be a massive slayer here.
And this comes in a package you can buy for less than £500? If it fulfills all its promises, we are looking at the best camera phone (opens in a new tab) at full market value.
Amazing, I got a unit to test and review over a period of several weeks, using it not only for photography, but also for life and work, using it for phone calls, life manager apps and mobile gaming, to see how it works. in real life.
And what I got is a camera phone with some premium specs, but also a small dollop of compromise.
Infinix Zero Ultra Review: Design
Many phones go for the nondescript black block approach, especially at more affordable price points, but not the Infinix Zero Ultra. It comes in two color options, Genesis Noir (a combination of matte black and striped-black design) and Coslight Silver, which has a white and silver back adorned with what Infinix calls the Kármán line, wavy patterns inspired by the border between the Earth and space. It gives the phone a stylish flair that makes it stand out to me.
The 6.8-inch AMOLED screen is big and bright, and the waterfall design adds an extra premium feel to the unit. Often with shiny phones like this, the trade-off is that they are extremely prone to smudging, but the back pattern means you notice a lot less here than on some other models, like the Oppo Reno 8 Pro recently (opens in a new tab). Still, with the waterfall screen causing a lot of accidental contact and interaction with the screen, as well as the very slippery nature of this beast, getting a protective cover is essential. A basic clear head is included with the unit, and it offers good protection, although you might want something brighter if you’re style conscious.
Infinix Zero Ultra review: Features
The main feature of the Infinix Zero Ultra is the camera specifications which are quite impressive. With a 200-megapixel main camera and a 32-megapixel front-facing selfie camera, as well as a 13-megapixel ultrawide camera and a macro lens on the back, Infinix is matching or surpassing market leaders like the Samsung S23 Ultra (whose 200 , 12 and 12MP data on their cameras, respectively).
The waterfall ‘3D’ AMOLED screen offers a maximum resolution of 2400 x 1024 and is also really nice and bright, with a peak brightness of 900 nits, and the MediaTek Dimensity 920 processor runs off a 4,500mAh battery, which is only slightly smaller. is the one that keeps the S23 Ultra running. The MediaTek processor, however, is where the main money saver is made here, and for good reason (jump to Performance to find out more).
The battery can be charged really fast too with the included 180W charger, going from almost empty to full in under an hour for me.
Infinix Zero Ultra Review: Camera
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The camera is the brightest spot of the Infinix Zero Ultra. The 200-megapixel main camera is a powerful beast, delivering incredibly sharp and crisp images in all light conditions.
The camera offers two general daytime image modes, AI Cam and Beauty, in addition to Portrait and Super Macro. AI Cam is your standard camera setup, and I used to use that for everyday use. Tapping an area of the screen to focus was very intuitive and successful for me, and there were also quick settings for zooming in, 0.6, 1 (normal) and 2, but manual zoom for work more precisely as smoothly as well.
I preferred the AI Cam over the Beauty mode mainly because Beauty tended to over-saturate images a bit, giving them a less natural, polished feel (which might actually be better than the more Instagram-obsessed among us), and Super Macro gave me decent but non-visual. close-up macros. However, it was the Portrait and Super Night modes that impressed me the most. The Portrait modes gave me true HDR level snaps, where the subject really popped out of the background, and the Aperture control was excellent too, for precise control of what to focus on.
Super Night mode, meanwhile, produced some of the best night shots I’ve taken on any budget or mid-range phone, where it made excellent use of limited light sources to give me sharp and stunning grain-free images.
The video is good too, with the native video app offering movie-making preset templates for quick and easy editing, ready for whatever social or video platform you use online. It’s all pretty intuitive too, with on-screen instructions, plenty of native filters and even access to royalty-free music.
So far, so great. But surely, at this price, there has to be a compromise somewhere…
Infinix Zero Ultra Review: Performance
…and it’s here. Where it comes to pure grunt, the makers of the Infinix Zero Ultra have decided to compromise on the processor. Although most of the leading phones in the market use Qualcomm Snapdragon processors (such as the 8 Gen 2 in the Samsung Galaxy S23), to offer this phone at such a low price, it is powered by a MediaTek processor Dimensity 920 much less capacity. Coming through benchmark tests as providing less than half the power of the newer Snapdragon processor, the 8-core processor quickly begins to struggle under the demands of the modern creative smartphone user.
As most phones unfortunately do these days, the Zero Ultra comes rammed with preloaded apps, and here these consist of Infinix’s own XOS ecosystem apps, such as XArena (for gaming), XClub (club perks), and the Palm Store, as well as the Hello Browser and native health, scanner, archive apps, Hi Translate and more.
All of this takes up a lot of space and memory, so when I had to add my own suite of Google apps and other select apps, the phone quickly felt bloated.
This resulted in a repeated restart loop, where the phone’s memory was so large that the phone forced itself to restart endlessly, requiring a manual hard reset intervention. In addition, sometimes apps would stop responding properly, and a restart would be necessary, as well as the wifi receptor being sane at best.
This started happening with fewer apps installed and a lower percentage of occupied storage than I have on my own cheap ‘runaround’ phone and a handy control example, a last generation Nokia, a slow, unwieldy but reliable phone. That tells me that Infinix seems to have built a phone where the basics don’t manage to reliably enough support the attractive headline features to fulfill the manufacturer’s ambition of a giant killer.
And that’s unfortunate, because there’s a lot to like about this phone.
Should I buy the Infinix Zero Ultra?
And one of the easiest things to like about it is the price tag. Coming in at just over £400 in the UK, cheaper than the Google Pixel 7 and even the now rather ancient Apple iPhone 11, and like the Samsung Galaxy A53, which has less specs than the Zero Ultra by a margin some (other than the battery). The compromise, as stated above, to reach this price point, is the inferior processor, but if you are willing to run light on apps and you are looking first and foremost for camera specifications, it should be worth the compromise.
Should I buy the Infinix Zero Ultra?
If you’re looking for a camera phone above all else, and you’re willing to run light on apps (or willing to work with the niche suite of native apps included here), the Infinix Zero Ultra could be real deal for you. The camera performs very well and the large number of megapixels is handy for shooting attractive portraits and night shots, better than almost any other phone in its price bracket. But if you’re someone who can’t function without a full suite of Google apps, and want to run the latest shopping, banking, social media and life manager apps flawlessly, you should be wary of these powerful camera specs who is being deceived. you in, with the underpowered processor struggling to keep the phone running at full potential.
