Infinix Note 7 Unboxing, Review: One Giant Budget Phone

Infinix Note 7 Unboxing, Review: One Giant Budget Phone

Verdict: The Note 7 is unique among the budget crowd as it is one of the few phones to have a huge display, stereo speakers, and a pretty solid set of internals headlined by a Helio G70 processor. Unfortunately, the phone is saddled with a lot of bloatware, and the giant display suffers from the HD+ resolution. Still, people looking for an affordable phablet with decent speakers and compelling internals that can handle some of the most popular games today might want to consider the Note 7.

The Infinix Note 7 is priced at Php 7,999 and is available at Lazada and Shopee.

Infinix is one of the more underrated brands here in the Philippines. While they mostly offer budget phones, a good number of them offer interesting specs that can rival those from more established brands. The Note 7 is arguably the biggest Infinix phone to date, and what makes this model intriguing is that it offers a giant, phablet-sized display for under Php 8k. 

Together with a large 5000mAh battery, 48-megapixel main rear camera, and an Helio G70 processor, is Infinix’s latest offering in the Philippines another compelling budget phone? 

Pros 

-Capable internals for its price 

-Decent battery life for a big phone 

-Loud stereo speakers 

 

Cons 

-Giant display only at HD+ resolution 

-Too many bloatware apps

-Not a real quad-rear-camera setup

 

Unboxing and Packaging Contents 

The Note 7 comes in a green box with a photo of the phone in front, RAM/storage configuration, and  Note 7 branding, with emphasis on its ginormous 6.95-inch display size. The back of the box lists the Note 7’s full specs. 

Inside the box, you get the usual stuff: the phone itself, a screen protector, documentation, jelly case, SIM ejector tool, MicroUSB cable, headset, and a 10w charger.  

 

Design and Build Quality 

At first glance, you’ll instantly see that the Note 7 is one really big phone. It dwarfs already-large mid-range phones like the Redmi Note 9 Pro, though it is thinner than the competition despite having an equally large 5000mAh battery.  

The Note 7 has an all-plastic build, utilizing a glossy finish for both the frame and back panel. Unlike previous Infinix phones, the Note 7 employs a fancy geometric design, along with a bold Infinix Note banding towards the middle. You might want to use the jelly case included with it, as the glossy finish attracts fingerprints and smudges like crazy.

Being a giant phone, you also get an equally huge circular camera module that houses a 4-LED flash and 4 cameras: 48-megapixel f/1.8 main camera, 2-megapixel f/2.4 macro camera, 2-megapixel f/2.4 depth sensor, and a low-light sensor. 

The SIM tray is located on the left, while the volume and power button is on the right, with the power button doubling as a fingerprint scanner. The volume controls have lower travel than usual, and it takes a while to get used to it. At the bottom, you have the loudspeaker, headphone jack, and an ancient MicroUSB port. Why Infinix couldn’t include a USB Type-C port with this huge phone, we’ll never know. 

For the Note 7’s crowning feature, you get a gargantuan 6.95-inch IPS panel with an HD+ resolution and a 20.5:9 aspect ratio. Its aspect ratio makes it ideal for watching movies, though the HD+ resolution is disappointing. Display quality suffers because of the pixelation brought about that 7-inch display that borders on tablet territory, which is a little distracting when you’re watching movies and videos. 

What’s nice though is that Infinix chose to use a punch-hole display for the 16-megapixel selfie snapper, keeping it at par with current design trends. In addition, colors look decent on the Note 7, and legibility is pretty good even under direct sunlight. The Note 7 comes with stereo speakers with DTS sound enhancement, making it a decent phablet for watching videos and playing games—more on the latter in the next part of the review.

 

Cameras  

While Infinix advertises the Note 7 as a budget phone with a quad-rear camera setup, it is more of a triple rear camera setup as the low-light shooter is a stat stuffer. When it comes to overall camera performance, the Note 7’s 48-megapixel main camera produced photos you’d expect on a budget phone. 

The Note 7 does a relatively good job of balancing highlights and shadows while keeping the white balance and colors as accurate as possible. The macro camera may sound like another stat-stuffing hardware feature, but it manages to produce photos that can be posted on social media.

Selfies taken using the 16-megapixel snapper produced generally good photos regardless of the lighting conditions.

For videos, the Note 7 can shoot up to Full HD at 30FPS. Despite being a budget phone, the Note 7 has an anti-shake feature (which is called anti-video for some strange reason) that adds a small crop for more stable footage. Check out the video samples below (first one is without anti-shake, while the second video is with anti-shake enabled):

 

 Hardware and software 

The Note 7’s strong point is its internals: you get a Helio G70 processor that is paired with 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. The RAM/storage combination is something you rarely see on a budget phone, and the Helio G70 processor is a great performer both for daily use and for games.  

As for games, the Note 7 is a great performer as a budget phone based on results we obtained from GameBench. Aside from being able to deliver more than 40FPS on NBA 2K20 even at the highest settings, the Note 7 can run PUBG Mobile at up to 40FPS in Balanced Mode. Playing PUBG Mobile in HD mode limits it to 30FPS, though the difference is barely noticeable compared to Balanced Mode due to the Note 7’s display resolution.

As for software, the Note 7 comes with an Android 10-based version of Infinix XOS overlay. While we appreciate that it comes with the latest version of Android, we’re annoyed at the amount of bloatware that cannot be uninstalled. What’s worse is that some of these bloatware apps deliver unnecessary notifications that end up flooding your notification panel. Since they cannot be uninstalled, disabling them is the next best remedy to get rid of them, though we really wished Infinix gave us an option to uninstall them instead.

A 5000mAh cell keeps the lights on with the Note 7. With our YouTube video loop test, the Note 7 lasted for a little over 12 hours—which is a fair score considering that the battery has to power up a large display. While the Note 7 comes with a 10w charger, it supports 18w wired charging. Using an 18w charger, it takes around 3 hours to fully top off the Note 7’s battery. 

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