First Impressions On The New Micromax Infinity N11 And Infinity N12

Micromax hasn’t really been active this year but it is about to return to the market with two new smartphones on its Infinity N-series. With the new Micromax Infinity N11 and Infinity N12, the Indian company has added most of the prominent trends in 2018. Both of its devices come with a notch, thin bezels, and AI-powered features. Other significant features of the two are dual rear camera setups, Android 8.1 Oreo and 4,000 mAh batteries.

Co-founder of Micromax, Vikas Jain, said at the release event claiming that the company tried their best to provide these Infinity N-series with affordable prices. The Infinity N11 is retailed at Rs. 8,999 while the Infinity N12’s price is Rs 9,999. Both of these handsets will go on sale via major offline and online stores in India from 25 December. We had the chance to experience these devices at the release event in New Delhi and we would like to share some thoughts about them.

The Infinity N11 and N12’s build materials are mostly plastic. These handsets feature pretty much the same design with a sizeable notch and prominent chin. Both of them also have volume rockers and a power button on their right which are well-located and tactile. These Micromax smartphones have bottom audio jacks and Micro-USB ports as well as top SIM trays with slots for two Nano-SIM cards and a microSD card.

Both smartphones are comfortable to hold on our hands due to their curved edges and rounded corners. They also have surprisingly light weights despite being packed with 4,000 mAh batteries. Their mostly-plastic build felt not as premium as other phones at a similar price range could offer.

The back panel of the Infinity N12 has a glossy finish which s so reflective and easily becomes a smudge feast. It comes in three colour options, including Viole, Velvet Red, and Blue Lagoon and all of them have a gradient finish. In comparison, the Infinity N11 comes with a matte black and a rubberized strip, similar to the Honor 8X’s design.

Both of the new Micromax smartphone sport a 6.18-inch HD+ display with an aspect ratio of 18.9:9 and 1500 x 720 pixels resolution. Spending some time with them, their displays’ brightness and color rendition were great, but we still felt a bit underwhelmed by their HD+ resolution which made images and text sometimes appeared a little bit fuzzy.

Helio P22 SoC powers both of these phones, with the Infinity N11 having 2GB RAM and the Infinity N12 having a higher 3GB RAM. The Helio P22 SoC has NeuroPilot AI tech which enables it to handle deep learning for Facial Recognition and also video and photo enhancement.

With just a limited time in using these phones, we couldn’t give a detailed though on it, though we were quite pleased with their smooth UI animations and fast app loading time. The 2GB RAM on the Infinity N11 might be a problem when you want to multitask.

These two Micromax devices run Android 8.1 Oreo with slight customizations by the company. Their UIs were better and cleaner than the previous versions but there were still some bloats. However, Micromax did promise to release Android Pie updates for both of these phones within 45 days.

Both of these handsets come with 32GB storage and are storage expandable up to 128GB via their microSD slots. In terms of battery life, the company claims that their standby time is 450 hours, 6 hours of video playback and 30 hours of talk time. But that is just what the company stated, we will have to test them to see if these claims are actually true.

In the camera department, both Infinity smartphones have AI-enhanced cameras on the rear which can adjust their contrast, saturation, and brightness of your photos automatically based on the conditions they detect.

There are a 13MP and 5MP rear sensors on both phones, but while the N11 comes with an 8MP front camera, the Infinity N12 has a 16MP front camera. Their camera apps offer many modes such as Panorama, Bokeh, Time Lapse, Beauty and FaceCute which is a Micromax name for AR stickers.

It is hard to come back to the market and attract more customers when the market is currently full of prominent smartphones from favorite names like Xiaomi, Samsung, Huawei, Honor and more. With its new Infinity N11 and N12, it may appear the Micromax have caught with the current competition, but these two smartphones are just like other regular phones out there, not completely stand out and they also don’t have any unique selling point for the Micromax brand. With more and more companies focusing on the sub-Rs. 10,000 segment, Micromax surely will have to try much harder if they want to be out of the competition.