Infinix was quite successful with the Note 3 in Nigeria; it became one of their best-selling smartphones, offering a balance of long lasting battery and above-par performance.
However, smartphones have a short life span. Just when we were thrilled by the Note 3 few months ago, Infinix has made the Note 4 a much better upgrade with a great design and excellence performance.
The Good
The first thing I realize when I held the Note 4 and looked at the back of the device was to quickly notice that the Note 4 ditches the annoying hybrid SIM slot. Now, you have your dual SIM inserted in the device and an SD card, which is a U-turn from some of Infinix recent phones.
Basically, seeing the phone for the first time, you will notice a new design sense adoption on the Note 4. Just looking at the front of the phone, you will spot a gorgeous physical home button and so far, this has been a great addition that makes using the phone absolutely fun and a little different from other iteration of Infinix smartphones.
At the left and right side of the home button, there is a capacitive soft key, but it doesn’t come with a backlit. You will have to get used to it while using it in the dark.
One thing you will notice is the reduction in screen size; the Note 4 is distinctively smaller than the Note 3, featuring a not-too-big 5.7-inch full HD screen. Personally, I still love 5-inch to 5.2-inch display screen-size in a phone, I really don’t think the screen size will be a problem. It is still fairly big, a balance between the very common 5.5-inch phones and 6-inch phone available in today’s market.
The front of the Note 4 is flat with a 2.5D curved glass finish and the back has slight curving closer to the edges. You will fall in love with the bright and vibrant colours produced by the display. Just on top of the display, is the 8MP selfie camera paired with a soft flash.
There are equally some prominent changes compared to the Note 3. While there is a physical home button on the Note 4, it also serves as a fingerprint scanner. The Note 4 comes with dual speaker grille, located at the bottom. The rest of the changes are mere symmetrical.
The back cover is removable, revealing the 4300mAh battery that is non-removable. Also, you will spot the dual SIM slots and SD card tray. In terms of design and form, the Note 4 is a far better upgrade than its predecessor, obviously with a much improved grip.
Camera
We won’t talk much about the Camera on this review, but will do so in another post. There is going to be a well detailed camera review of the Infinix Note 4 coming up soon. While that is still cooking, it is cool to know that the Note 4 is equipped with an 8MP front facing camera, paired with a soft flash.
The primary camera is a 13MP shooter located at the back of the phone with a dual LED flash. The camera app can be set to open with the home button by pressing it twice. You will find this feature very helpful if you don’t want to keep searching for the camera app when you need to take a quick shot.
Software, Performance and Battery
Infinix Note 4 runs on XOS Chameleon 2.3 right out of the box (Based on Android 7.0). The in-house custom UI gives the phone a lot of pre-installed apps, settings and features that allows you to better manage your device and customize options to suit your preference.
The experience is very smooth; the UI is fast and is an improvement over earlier builds of the OS which were a bit buggy. You get apps like PHX browser, App Freeze, and other stuffs that are useful and non-useful. Whichever the case, you can either uninstall, or freeze a redundant app when the former option is not available.
Infinix has some alternatives for many of the standard Google apps you will find on the phone. This all boils down to your preference, you may decide to use X-account rather than the standard Google account to manage your accounts.
In terms of internal material design, the phone comes with 2GB RAM, 16GB internal memory and an octa-core MediaTek processor clocked at 1.3GHz. Is something ringing a bell in your head right now?
Same specs with the Note 3? You could yell….. But that is what it is, it is however not the same thing entirely as you get a better performance from the OS upgrade, a physical home button and a glossy back.
You won’t have problems with multi-tasking; at least I have not noticed any since I started using the phone for close to two weeks now before writing this review.
Here is the Antutu benchmark score (36336). It is absolutely fixed with the range the phone appeals to. The Note 4 is a budget smartphone, so you shouldn’t really expect anything way over the top in terms of score, but you will still get value for your money.
The Note 4 comes with a giant 4300mAh battery with the popular Xcharge feature that guarantee’s fast charging. Emphatically, the Note 4 can last 48-solid hours in fair usage, but if you are a heavy phone user, you should get one full day of use without finding the next wall socket to plug your charger.
The Note 4 also supports 4G LTE, which was lacking in the Note 3. It supports most major network in Nigeria, but lacks the weird band 28 where Glo has its frequency.
Verdict
The Note 4 isn’t a huge upgrade over the Note 3 in terms of core hardware, but the design changes are a huge improvement over its predecessor. If you care about look, the Note 4 will meet your needs. It remains a great buy!
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