Cloudfone Next Infinity Review: The Budget Full Screen Smartphone

Last year, Cloudfone started introducing their first 18:9 display smartphones to the market. One particular phone, the Next Infinity, is one of those phones. Let’s see if their first budget full-screen smartphone can outmatch the competition in our full review.

Cloudfone Next Infinity Specs:

• 5.7-inch HD+ IPS 18:9 display, 2.5D curved glass
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor
• 3GB RAM
• 16GB storage up to 128GB via microSD
• 13MP PDAF rear camera w/ portrait mode, LED flash
• 16MP front camera w/ portrait mode, soft light
• Dual-SIM
• 4G LTE, 700MHz
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS
• OTG
• Gyroscope
• Fingerprint sensor
• Android 7.1.2 Nougat
• 2,900mAh battery

Design and Build Quality

The Next Infinity sports a 5.7-inch, all black, slim looking design. The bezels on the top and bottom are significantly reduced thanks to the 18:9 aspect ratio of the screen. The phone is simplistic and low-profile in its appearance overall.

At the front, we have the 5.7-inch 18:9 HD+ display, a 16MP selfie shooter with LED flash, a call speaker, a light sensor, and a notification LED. As expected, there are no capacitive buttons with this all-screen phone. The whole front panel is also encased with elegant 2.5D glass.

On the right side, we have the volume rocker and the power button.

There are no keys or ports available on the left side.

Up top, we have the standard 3.5mm audio port.

And at the bottom, we have the micro-USB port and the main microphone

On the back panel, we have the 13MP camera with LED flash and a secondary microphone, along with the fingerprint sensor and loudspeaker.

It’s also nice to know that the Next Infinity has a removable battery and dedicated dual sim card slots and microSD slot. Features that aren’t very common on phones with full screen displays. Just goes to show that there are still people who appreciate old-school features.

The phone feels sturdy and light thanks to its unibody structure. Although the back plate is a smudge magnet, thankfully there is a silicon case that comes with the package to avoid this.

Display and Multimedia

The Next Infinity has a beautiful 5.7-inch 1440 x 720 IPS display. The colors are accurate, images are crisp, and viewing angles are spectacular. It’s amazing that at 282ppi, it looks just as good as some devices that have more pixels in their displays.

The audio quality of the loudspeaker is generally acceptable. The volume output is high but loses clarity when it’s maxed out. The middle and high range are audible but the lows are weak. Thankfully the included earphones have acceptable bass presence and are comfortable to use.

Camera

It’s quite significant to note that the Next Infinity only has a single 16MP front and a single 13MP rear shooter compared to the common dual cameras that you might expect. Thankfully, both cameras are quite capable and have a lot of features like Beauty, Panorama, Portrait, and Timelapse.

The rear shooter also has some features that the front doesn’t have such as Super Pixel, Night, QR Code, and Professional mode to name a few. The settings page is fully packed with features as well. We have the Self Timer, Camera Roll, Smile Shot, Shutter Sound, Anti-Flicker, Touch Shot, Auto Scene, and Picture Size.

The quality of the pictures are good. The rear camera performs well in sharpness of detail and color accuracy. There is however some issues with low-light shots showing significant grain. Despite having average performance on low-light photographs, the camera is capable of capturing dark situations. The built-in LED flash does help in providing light source for your subjects but it can worsen the quality of your low-light shots.

The front shooter performs well too. Selfies are generally sharp, detailed, and vibrant. Similar to the rear camera, the front shooter also suffers from grainy selfies in low-light as well.

Video recording quality is a bit average. You can record in 1080p at 30fps in MP4 format. The subject is well focused and audio quality is acceptable. Low-light performance however is as grainy as the stills.

Apps and User Interface

The phone is runnning on Cloudfone’s in-house designed launcher on top of Android 7.1.2 Nougat. The launcher doesn’t have an app drawer to store your apps with. It uses home screens instead, similar to Apple’s iOS. If you prefer having an app drawer to organize your apps and keep them tidy, you may download a different launcher from the Google Play Store.

The notifications tab can be accessed by swiping from the top. Swiping from the right will reveal the shortcut menu. There’s a bit of lag whenever you swipe from the notifications menu to the shortcut menu, though that’s not exactly a reflection of the phone’s overall performance.

There are bloatwares in this phone that you can uninstall. Thankfully there aren’t many of them. You have apps like Lazada, EA Play, Opera Mini, Spotify, UC Browser, etc. As expected, you’ll also have Google apps and two in-house apps of Cloudfone. When it comes to storage capacity, you may have a disadvantage. With only 16GB of internal storage, you’re only left with almost 8GB because of the OS and pre-loaded apps. Good thing the phone has a dedicated microSD slot for up to 128GB capacity and file transfers are made possible by the phone’s USB OTG feature.

The two in-house Cloudfone apps included are the Cloudfone App Shop and the Cloudfone Care. The Cloudfone App Shop is basically Cloudfone’s version of the Google Play Store. The Cloudfone Care app however, features Cloudfone news, system maintenance, feedback button, Customer Care support, and OTA updates.

Performance and Benchmarks

The Next Infinity is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 Quad-core processor. Its graphics is run by an Adreno 308 and also carries 3GB of RAM for multitasking. Doing normal tasks such as browsing, social media, and watching online videos are snappy. Intense tasks such as gaming are good overall, but it does give the device quite a challenge to run at times.

AnTuTu – 36,340
GeekBench – 682 (Single-Core), 1,912 (Multi-Core)
PCMark – 3,290 (Work 2.0), 4,396 (Work 1.0)
3DMark – 68 (Sling Shot)
AndroBench – 254.32 MB/s (Read), 70.48 MB/s (Write)

Gaming

Gaming on the Next Infinity is overall good. Low to middle graphic intensive games such as Candy Crush or Arena of Valor have stable and reliable framerates. Highly intensive graphic games such as Asphalt 8: Airborne suffers some frame drops from time to time. It is still possible to play these kinds of games but not all. Gaming sessions does not cause any heating issues in this device. The phone is cool most of the time you’re gaming and once in a while you may still feel some warmth on the back panel.

Connectivity, Call Quality, and Battery Life

The call quality and connectivity of this phone is very good overall. It has your standard LTE, Bluetooth, GPS and WiFi. The GPS is accurate and reliable. As mentioned earlier, the dedicated two SIM slots inside the removable back cover is a great feature that you don’t see often in a smartphone of this category nowadays.

The battery capacity of the Next Infinity is 2,900mAh. It does seem small than most phones of this caliber. Overall, the battery life is average and it could last you a day only if you are a light to moderate user. If you are a gamer or loves to consume multimedia, then you might need to charge at least once or twice a day to be able to last. Its also important to note that the Next Infinity does not support fast charging. It took us 2 hours and 30 minutes to have a full charge. We also did some benchmarks on the battery. Our video loop test lasted almost 9 hours while the PCMark test got a longer 9 hours and 30 minutes.

Conclusion

The Cloudfone Next Infinity may not have the bells and whistles of more premium phones in the market right now, but it can still perform well given its specifications and cost. Its low profile design doesn’t reflect its good performance, capable camera, and beautiful display. It may not be able to provide the best low light performance or the best audio quality, but at the price of Php 6,999, it is definitely on of the best option you can have in the market for an affordable 18:9 display smartphone.

The Pros:

• Large display
• Good performance
• Removable battery
• Capable cameras
• Budget friendly

The Cons:

• Inadequate internal storage
• Less than a day of battery life
• Noisy images in low-light shots