Unboxing and Review of the Infinix NOTE 40 Pro+: A Decent Stylish Phone

Infinix last week unveiled its NOTE 40 series in Uganda and were officially announced in the market by the State Minister of Finance for Investment, and Privatization, Hon. Anite Evelyn. The series comes in four variants but only three are available in the Ugandan market — the NOTE 40, the NOTE 40 Pro, and the NOTE 40 Pro+ which succeeded the NOTE 30 series that were officially launched in May 2023 but made available in Uganda in June.

We got the NOTE Pro+ for review which is quite similar to its predecessor the NOTE 30 VIP but with a few tweaks. What you get in the box;

The design packaging is the same throughout the Infinix smartphones. The bundle comes with the Infinix NOTE 40 series smartphone — in this case; the NOTE 40 Pro+, and its accessories including a 20W MagPad for wireless charging, a phone case that is compatible with the MagPad, a screen protector, Type-C earphones, USB Type-C charging & data cable, and a 100-watt fast-charging brick. The version of the NOTE 40 Pro+ we got comes with a leather-style texture finish at the back in Vintage Green — but it also comes in titan gold color.

Price and specifications

The phone is priced at UGX1,497,000 and is available at all Infinix outlets, Airtel Uganda service centers, and authorized mobile phone outlets across Uganda, ensuring easy accessibility for interested buyers.

• Body: 164.3 x 74.5 x 8.1 mm, weights: 190g, and is IP53, dust and splash resistant.
• Display: 6.78-inch AMOLED, 120Hz, 1080 x 2436px resolution, with Corning Gorilla Glass protection.
• SoC and Processor:  Mediatek Dimensity 7020 (6 nm) and Octa-core processor.
• Memory: 256GB + 12GB RAM; with dedicated slot: microSD, microSDHC, and microSDXC.
• OS/Software:  Android 14, coupled with XOS 14.
• Rear camera: 108 MP (primary) + 2 MP + 2 MP.
• Front camera: 32 MP.
• Video capture: Rear camera: 1440p@30fps and 1080p@30/60fps; Front camera: 1080p@30fps.
• Battery: 4,600mAh with charging at 100W wired, 20W wireless MagCharge, and supports reverse wired and wireless charging.
• Connectivity: 5G; Dual Nano-SIM, Wi-Fi 5; Bluetooth 5, and NO 3.5mm earphone jack.
• Misc: Fingerprint reader (under the display), and stereo speaker tuned by JBL.

Build, Design, and Display

It is interesting to see Infinix changing its design and aesthetic to look a bit fresh. The NOTE 40 Pro+ has a respectable skinny finish compared to its predecessor which had a flat design which many I believe will find more practical when it comes to gripping the phone.

The phone is built with a plastic frame, and at the back, you get a leather-style texture making the phone more interesting because it adds a nice bit of grip and because of the leather finish the phone doesn’t get all smudgy. At the back, you have the camera housing which is rather large and stretches almost to the other end of the phone which is not particularly ugly. On top of the phone, you have the IR blaster and a signage of the JBL logo to indicate that the speakers are by JBL. At the bottom you have the SIM card tray with no MicroSD card support, and a USB Type-C charging port — and the port will also be used for your earphones, the company discontinued the earphone jack and there’s a chance we shall see this on more of its devices in the coming times.

The Infinix NOTE 40 Pro+ is IP53, dust and splash-resistant. You get it a bit wet but don’t go and dip it in a pool of water.

Infinix slimmed the design so it has reasonable skinny bezels and not so much wasted space. This gives you a 6.78-inch display and if you have huge hands it fits perfectly — in other words, you get the grip tight. Unfortunately, it does not support a one-handed mode you will struggle most of the time especially when you try to reach up to the top of the display, thus you have to use two hands so as you don’t fumble with it one-handed.

The phone comes with a nice 1080p AMOLED display protected by Corning Gorilla Glass and has a refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a high brightness mode which Infinix is rating up to 1300 nits. It is a nice punch bright display and you get better outdoor readability. That’s to say, on the maximum brightness level, you will have no trouble with outdoor visibility.

The NOTE 40 Pro+ comes with a nice color profile where you can switch up the look and feel of your display. You can change the color tones which Infinix has been trying its best to add some of these lifestyle and quality features to their phones considering that they are coming at lower price points.

The phone does come with a phone casing that you can clip on your phone and it won’t affect or cover the sides of the phone so they remain exposed and generally keep the profile of the phone similar to when it doesn’t have the cover on the only downside with the case is that it does not protect the edges of the phones

Next to the cameras, the phone has a halo-colorful light system that can be used for notification alerts. (Notification lights are a bit rare on today’s smartphones but it is good to see Infinix making a bit of effort with this old-school feature). By default, the feature comes turned off and many might not know it but it can be adjusted in the setting. To do so, open the Settings app >> Active halo lighting >> Select the features you like for your notification.

Memory, Software, and Performance

The NOTE 40 pro+ is stuffed with the Mediatek Dimensity 7020 chipset backed by 12 GB of RAM making the phone a little bit snappier and more performant than its predecessor and gets a slightly higher tier of work done even when you’re using lots of apps (multitasking) at the same time. The phone runs on Android 14 and the XOS launcher is slathered on top which tweaks Android quite a considerable amount

Infinix has completely cleaned up their UI which is now a heavy and aggressive skin. The layout is smooth— everything is flowing (swiftly) the way we should expect it to with no lagging.

On gaming, the phone did a decent job. There were no dropped frames nor were the games slowing down and for such an inexpensive phone there’s a lot of potential considering that it is using sort of a lower power MediaTek chipset, however, for best performance, it is best to stick to medium-level frame rates when gaming. In addition, Infinix’s XOS gives you a gaming mode feature to boost your gaming — you can adjust everything from speed to framerates, and display, among others.

There’s no MicroSD card support, but the phone comes with an onboard storage of 256GB enough for you to install apps, and store all your media including songs, photos, and videos, to mention a few.

Cameras

Nothing has changed much from the predecessor, you get a trio setup; 108MP + 2MP + 2MP shooters at the back with OIS. At the front, you get a 32MP shooter. The camera app is packed with features and modes that you can play around with to enhance your photos. Even though there’s OIS, photos and video appear pretty shakey — it is not fully stabilized as we thought hopefully Infinix would fix it in its upcoming devices.

The cameras have improved with the night mode photography which can be switched up to super night mode photography the photos appear much better and are usable. The dedication night mode brightens the photos. In ambient light, the photos fall a bit but in well-set light environments, the photos are decent with reasonably accurate color reproduction and sharpness.

When it comes to videos, you get to shoot and get quad-HD videos and surprisingly they are good. You shoot videos in Full HD resolution by default but you can also push that to 2K and unfortunately, that is how it goes, so no 4K.

Battery life and power management

This is the phone’s headliner and one of the major upgrades is the charging speeds. The phone comes with a slightly smaller battery, 4,600mAh compared to its predecessor which came with 5,000mAh. So far during our use, the battery life was frankly excellent which can even see the most demandant of power users through a full day of intensive use on a single charge.

The charging part is the most interesting bit of all for this phone. The phone charges fast thanks to its 100-watt fast charging, this is fundamentally one of the most exciting upgrades to see. Getting your phone charged that fast in about 10 minutes and getting almost a whole day of runtime —takes a lot of that battery anxiety off your plate.

The NOTE 40 Pro+ also has 20-watt wireless charging and supports reverse wireless charging which you can use to top up the battery of your friends’ phones. For this, the NOTE 40 Pro+ comes with what the company calls a “MagPad” which lines up with the circles on the phone casing magnetly to wireless charge your phone.

The 20-watt wireless charging support is quite rare to find around mid-range devices but it is good to see that Infinix did it and hopefully, this is embedded in their future phones as well.

For power management, Infinix has stuffed in the phone its new Cheetah X1 charge management to help prevent overcharging-type situations. You can set this as well as other charging management solutions in Setting >> Battery >> Charging >> Here you can adjust the charging speeds, and bypass charging to prevent the battery from overcharging and to keep the phone from heating up.

Honorable Mention: JBL’s Speakers
While I was excited to see JBL back on the NOTE series, I thought they would be an improvement but I was wrong. The sound is a bit hollow —there’s some little distortion of the sound at max volume. However, the sound remains pretty decent, hopefully, this will be improved in the next NOTE series.

The phone doesn’t come with the standard 3.5mm earphone jack and now supports USB Type-C earphones that are plug-in to where you charge from. So you will no longer be able to charge your phone and simultaneously use your earphones and the only way to opt for this is if you use wireless earbuds.

The company discontinuing the earphone jack, I would say this is a nice admission that Infinix removed something from the phone itself so even on less expensive phones like the NOTE 40 Pro+.

Verdict
The Infinix NOTE series has become one of those phones you would look forward to every year. This time, the company showed a different style, aesthetic, and combination of features. For UGX1,497,000 it is not difficult to find a phone that might outperform the NOTE 40 Pro+ but often then you can make other compromises for those companion and lifestyle features and you see that the NOTE 40 Pro+ is a smartphone that you can opt for in that price range.

Therefore, with a few tweaks/upgrades and the general software setup aside, the NOTE 40 Pro+ is pretty much a decent phone. The battery life and charging is excellent, the performance is good enough, the photos are decent and usable, among others.