The Infinix Note 12 VIP is a high end phone with some high specifications and the performance to match. For example this phone has a 120 Watt charger that fills up the battery in record Infinix time. Although this phone has 8GB RAM, this can be extended up to 13GB using MemFusion. This is just a tip of the iceberg as this phone has lots of other features to offer.
The Infinix Note 12 VIP retails for KES41,999 and is available online on XPARK and all Infinix outlets countrywide. The Note 12 Series also includes the Infinix Note 128+8 GB for KES27,999 and the Infinix Note 12i 128+8GB going for KES20,999.
AMOLED 120Hz Display
One of the things I thoroughly enjoy on this device is the AMOLED screen with its true black colours. This is possible because this display does not have an LCD screen with backlight that shows black scenes as a greyish tint. Instead the AMOLED screen had its own light so it can switch OFF pixels in a dark scene. When watching a movie, its very hard to even outline the screens edge in some scenes.
This photo shows the Note 12 VIP and the HOT 10 Play showing the same game scene. The NOTE 12 VIP’s screen edge outline is not even visible. In contrast, you can clearly outline the Infinix HOT 12 Play’s screen edges.
120Hz Refresh rate
Not only is the AMOLED screen perfect but it also has a 120Hz refresh rate for smoother user interface animations. This high refresh rate ensures a better gaming experience, clear image quality and finer details with no jittering.
A higher screen refresh rate also means a higher screen recording frame rate. If these screen recordings are uploaded to YouTube, they result in a much better and smoother video than a normal 24 or 30 fps video. The highest frames per second that I have recorded on the Infinix NOTE 12 VIP is 44 fps.
If I’m not gaming, I set the refresh rate to automatic to improve the battery life. This is because the 120Hz refresh rate option used more CPU resources and thus uses more battery capacity.
120 Watt Impressive Charger
The Infinix NOTE 12 VIP comes with the biggest charger in the Infinix lineup of smartphones. Not only is it big physically big but it’s also the biggest in specifications and fast charging. This charger has two charging voltage rages. One is 5.0 Volts at 3.0 Amperes and the other is 4.0 to 20.0 Volts at 8.0A. The later is enough to charge a laptop and when used on the NOTE 12 VIP, it is very fast.
The official Infinix charging time from 0% to Full battery (4500mAh) is 17 Minutes. Obviously I tried this and here are my results. My experiment was done with the phone OFF the whole time.
I got very impressive fast results of 28% after 3 minutes and 47% after only 7 minutes. The time it took to charge to full capacity was 28 minutes. This figure is higher than the official Infinix value of 17 Minutes. So I tried the experiment again with the phone turned ON after 1 minute of charging. And the result was even more amazing because I measured a time of only 19 minutes.
108MP Camera
The Note 12 VIP has a triple rear camera setup with the main big diameter lens being 108MP. The other two lenses are a 13MP lens for macro and wide angle photography and a 2MP Bokeh Lens. This set up also contains quad flash and laser detection auto focus.
Still Photography
The main lens takes photos as a 16MP lens when the 108MP feature is not enabled. This lens takes some very decent photos as the samples below show. The 108MP feature can take very nice photos which are also very big in storage size. For example a 16MP photo is only 2.8MB while the one taken using 108MP is 17MB. That is very big even for social media. But they are good to zoom in and look at the finer details on the Full HD+ AMOLED screen.
Here are some sample photos.
Portrait
The following were taken using the 13MP Macro/Wide-angle lens.
Macro
Wide Angle
To compare the AICAM and wide angle shot, I first took two photos standing on the same location. One a normal photo and the other one a wide angle photo where a whole building shows up. You can tell that the AICAM photo has richer colours than the wide angle image.
Super-Night
Video Recording
With a massive 108MP main rear camera, I thought that the maximum video quality would be 4K. The maximum video record quality is 2K (1440p) with the other qualities being 1080p and 720p, all at 30 frames per second. The laser auto focus makes sure that the subject you’re filming is in focus so the phone is never looking for non existent focus that ruins the video
Video Recording is possible with the wide angle setting but not in Super Macro. The other features available in video recording mode include Video stabilization, Bokeh Mode and beauty mode. And finally, the maximum magnification in video recording is 10X.
The two microphones, one at the top and the other at the bottom really make the outcome videos have very good sound and with direction. With earphones, you can track a vehicle moving from the right to the left of the screen not only visually but and through the changing audio levels.
Dual Speakers
Apart from the microphones, The NOTE 12 VIP is equipped with two speakers, one on top and one on the bottom to give users a stereo audio experience that immerses them into every scene.
Extended Memory
The official out of the box RAM figure is 8GB. However this can be extended up to 13GB by using the MemFusion feature. This feature allocates part of the internal storage to be used as RAM. Already the 8GB value is large but this can be extended by choosing either 2GB, 3GB or 5GB for a maximum of 13GB.
The new feature on the NOTE 12 VIP allocated background apps to the virtual RAM to improve the speed of frequently used apps. This is a new feature that was not available on the Infinix Note 11 Pro. This means that even though 8GB RAM is large, the performance will be improved by using the MemFusion feature.
Privacy Dashboard & Indicator
Since the NOTE 12 VIP runs on Android 12, it comes with the new privacy dashboard. To open the privacy dashboard you need to go into your settings and select privacy on the list, then select privacy dashboard. From here you can pinpoint in a timeline which applications have been accessing which feature. In the gallery below you can clearly see the time that the microphone feature was accessed and by which applications.
Privacy Indicator
Another ne feature is the green privacy indicator on the screen. This will pp up when any app on the NOTE 12 VIP is using the camera or microphone. This will show up as an animation of either a microphone or camera icon.
Conclusion
The Infinix NOTE 12 Pro is a beast of a phone with lightning charging times, great performance and a VIP look. The only thing I would change is to include 4K video recording.
Great review as always. I Love your work.