Infinix Note 6 Full Review: Ditched Android O, But Still Worthy to Own
After nearly two weeks using the Infinix Note 6, we finally have our final say on the phablet. After unveiling the phone in Uganda following its official launch in Nigeria, PC Tech Magazine received a Mocha Brown color variant to review. However, the phone comes in two other color options; Midnight Black, and Aqua Blue.
To recap, the Infinix Note 6 is the third installment in Infinix’s note series. It’s predecessors are the Note 5 Stylus (2017), and the Note 4 & 4 Pro (2016). To compare all the installments, we noticed a huge change in the phones. This considering that the manufacturer tries to keep up with the latest smartphone trends.
In our first impressions, we had the affordability — UGX750,000, the AMOLED display, camera performance, the build among others. To further extend this quick review, here is our final review.
Infinix Note 6 Design and Display
There’s been a little change in the design and display in the Note 6 when compared to its predecessors, mostly the Infinix Note 5 Stylus.
The phone has got clean unibody design and appears tad narrower, thinner, and smaller than its predecessor — this could be because of the reduced bezels and cut chin at the bottom, giving a wider display.
Because of its design, its quite comfortable to hold. The phone has a matte finish at the back with the panel made of poly-carbonate which feels sturdy. The matte finish is good because it’s non-slippery and also doesn’t smudge easily.
It comes with the power and volume buttons placed on the side-right. The power is designed with a pattern on it to differentiate it from the volume, thus once touched you could easily know it is the power button.
The left-side is a 2+1 card slot that can houses two Nano-SIMs as well as a microSD card of up to 128GB capacity simultaneously. Note that the phone supports both 4G sims.
At the bottom you have x pen housing, single speaker grill, microUSB port, and 3.5mm auido jack.
And finally the front top panel has the 16MP camera, LED light, and a notification light. At the back, is a triple rear camera placed vertical and a LED light place side of it. The cameras are huge development from the Note 5 Stylus that had single camera. The fingerprint mount is placed at the rear as well with the Infinix branding below it.
Overall the design is not so much different from its predecessor, just a few twerks, here…and…there.
The Infinix Note 6 has an AMOLED display with FHD+ resolution of 1080 x 2160 pixels and a screen aspect ratio of 18:9. The company kept the resolution and aspect ratio but a huge change done on the display. With the AMOLED display, it produces accurate colors, fair contrast, dip blacks & white, and saturated colors — this gives a better viewing experience.
With the aspect ratio at 18:9, the phone can support zoom capabilities of 16:9 videos to fit the whole screen of the phone. Note that, content creators still create videos that are 16:9, thus phones with a huge aspect ratio could work if the whole space is taken up, hence the zoom capabilities.
Under direct sunlight, the brightness seemed sufficient to comfortably read text and watch media. The display is also reflective, and we also found to be quite bright and interesting in outdoor conditions.
Overall, the display was a good improvement on the phone. This can be one of the reasons to buy an Infinix Note 6.
Infinix Note 6 Software, Performance & Battery Life
The phone runs on Cheetah XOS v5.0.0 based on Android 9.0 (Pie) ditching Android One we saw with the Infinix Note 5 Stylus. To us, this was such a disappointment as we think, Infinix could have maintained Android O since its clean compared to the Pie. The company didn’t comment why they ditched the OS but they had there reason to.
On the homepage are the apps installed on the phone but when you swipe up, brings all the apps installed on the phone in alphabetical order.
The down side of Android 9 Pie, is with Infinix Note 6 comes with unnecessary ads (can be hidden but can’t be gotten rid of totally), and unnecessary pre-installed apps.
The XOS comes with a side drawer which only appears when the X-Pen is pulled out. The drawer only houses the X-Pen features that include; Create Note, Write Memo, Painting, among others.
About the performance, the Infinix Note 6 run smoothly so did the apps as we didn’t notice much drops. Thus the performance was descent. While switching between apps, we noticed that the phone occasionally stuttered, especially when more than five or six apps were running in the background with one of them being a huge game app.
The 4GB of RAM is not much of a performance bottleneck, if you are not running multiple apps including huge game app or any other app that takes so much of the RAM in the background, multitasking is smooth. Thankfully, we did not come across instances of unresponsive apps. This is because of its Mediatek MT6765 Helio P35 chipset and Octa-core (4×2.3 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A53) processor.
On the battery life, well the Infinix Note 6 could go for two days without charging. Apparently, its non-removable Li-Po 4,000mAh battery could not last 2 days if it were a heavy user using it. We noticed the battery capacity was also reduced from 4,500mAh we saw with the Note 5 Stylus, to now 4,00mAh.
The Infinix Note 6 supports quick charging and can at least bring 0% to 50% in about 30 minutes.
Infinix Note 6 Camera Performance
Well, we have to appreciate the efforts Infinix puts in improving its phone camera in every handset it launches. The Infinix Note 6 being one of them. As compared with the Note 5, we could note at least some difference, and the AMOLED could be playing in this roll.
The phone comes with AI integrated triple rear camera placed in a vertical setting. The sensors are 8MP wide-angle + 16MP primary + 2MP deep sensor. They capture crisp well clean shots with commendable sharpness and punchy colors — worth sharing on social media. But if noticed keenly, the photos appear to have too much noise in them, but can’t be noticed if not zoomed in.
The photos captured indoors and in low-light conditions were impressive when using the supportive flash light. If not they lack sharpness and turned out grainy with a lot of noise.
The 16MP front-facing camera does captures selfie photos that can be described as okay at best. Like the rear cameras the photos are good enough for sharing. Meanwhile on zooming in, one can easily notice the grainy texture. Low-light selfies have little in terms of detail and turned out noisy with poor color reproduction.
In terms of video, both cameras can shoot up to 1080p video at 30fps. The focus is good so are the colors, and the audio is fair for the front-facing camera and average for the rear camera.
The Infinix Note 6 X-Pen
This handy feature is one of the key selling features of the phone, as we mentioned before. It appears at the bottom panel of the phone right after the speaker grill.
To pull it out, you press once on its tip and it pops-out but not completely. After popping out, you can then fully pull it out to use. Once it is pulled out on the display you notice a drawer pops out as well with different default features you can use the pen for.
After using the pen, it is recommended to place it back. It comes with a reminder that will tell you to place the pen back if you’re not using it in order to avoid losing it as well as battery drainage.
The phone can be used to navigate through the phone if you don’t want to use your fingers. It can also be used to make notes (writing that’s to say), drawing, painting, among others.
Painting using the X Pen on the Infinix Note 6 
Drawing using the X Pen on the Infinix Note 6
It is a handy tool on the phone which the company claims is upgraded with a combined AI and AR technology to redefine the fun of drawing experiences that go beyond the norm.
If you’re an artist, this would definitely be your phone as you could use the X-Pen to draft some of work even on the go.
Verdict
Infinix Note 6 is a major upgrade over its predecessors in this series with improvements in almost all areas. The design is fresh and the build quality is good. The display very good for the asking price — UGX750,000, and the camera performs with AI integration is perfect.
Battery life is impressive and the performance upgrade it brings is also noteworthy. There are occasional stutters could be explained because of the unnecessary ads that comes with its XOS UI.
It is worth buying mostly to people that are more content creators, like artists who can even sketch on the go.
