INFINIX RACE EAGLE: FULL REVIEW

I've heard a lot about the Infinix Race Eagle but i did not take much interest in it because its a subsidiary of a manufacturer (Alcatel ) that has a bad reputation in Telecommunications industry. However in the past few months the Infinix brand  has began to gain traction in the Nigerian smartphone market as they have been striking deals with various service providers to make their smartphone available to more people around the country. Infinix is being recognized as one of the best budget smartphones in the market today with a few competitors such as the Tecno Phantom A1 which I did a full review on here.I decided to do a full review on this device too because it has definitely caught a lot of people's attention.

OVERVIEW

Straight out of the box the infinity Race Eagle is an unassuming phone, its a slightly hefty device with a 5.0" capacitive touch-screen across the diagonal. The design of the phone is not so impressive however Infinix has managed to keep the phone at a maximum width of 9.7mm, its not the thinnest phone out there but the thickness adds a little heft to it and it makes it easier for day to day use. The phone is made of polycarbonate plastic and comes in two colors either White or Black. The Packaging of the phone is basic, the box contains, the 2000mAh battery, USB cable, USB wall Charger and a set of earphones. On the back of the phone we have the 8.0MP camera with the dual LED flash and closer to the bottom end we have the speakers. On the front we have the display, a 0.3MP Camera and the capacitive touch buttons closer to the bottom of the phone. the phone also has a faux plastic chamfered edge which is an attempt to make the phone look premium.

DISPLAY/UI

The Infinix race eagle come with an IPS 5.0" capacitive touch display with a resolution of 480 x 854 which is a total let down. Resolution is so terrible and its even worse when we tried to use it outdoors even at full brightness settings, we could barely make out what was on the screen it is also not very responsive and was a little difficult to use. The display also lacks screen protection so you might have to buy an aftermarket screen protector just to feel a little safer. The device runs on Android 4.1 jelly bean and Infinix has promised an update to jelly bean 4.2.2 is in the works. Infinix has left the Android OS as close to stock as possible on this phone. they haven't pre-installed any proprietary applications but it however comes pre-installed with applications such as Eskimi, 2go, whatsapp, flash share, e.t.c. but  if you buy the phone from MTN you get MTN Afrinolly, MTN Football and MTN play but you can always go into the Google Play store and choose from the over 800,000 applications available there. In our  experience with the phone the lack of proprietary software gives the phone a bittersweet experience, sweet in the sense that you have enough space left on your ROM  and you can expect timely updates from the manufacturer since they haven't added their own custom skin on top of Android. it however leaves a bitter taste in the sense that you have the stock Android UI which some people might not be conversant with and Infinix hasn't shown any innovation that makes them stand out from other manufacturers

CAMERA

the Infinix Race Eagle packs a primary 8.0MP camera at the back with dual LED flash BSI and AutoFocus and a 0.3 VGA camera in the front. The phone delivers good picture quality in the dark because of the Flash  and the BSI (BackSide Illumination) allows it to perform very well in all weather conditions.Its overall picture quality is manageable considering the fact that its a budget phone.The camera app itself stays true to the stock Android UI and Infinix hasn't added any modifications of their own like you would find from other manufacturers. 

PROCESSORS/STORAGE

The Race Eagle is powered by a 1.0Ghz dual-core processor, as you would expect from the name of the phone, this device is supposed to be fast yeah? don't be deceived the phone lags a lot and after extensive use it gets so hot you won't be able to touch it for a while. I'm guessing this has to do with the kernel build in the phone or the GPU. One of the flaws of this phone is its 512MB RAM and 4GB ROM, after boot up the android jelly bean OS would take a sizeable chunk (almost 256MB) of that RAM to run the OS operations the leftover RAM space is barely enough to run applications and multi-task without lagging.Applications that required large memory space on the RAM could barely run smoothly on this phone, playing games on the phone was smooth at first, we were able to run premium games like asphalt 6 on it but we had to close every other application to enjoy the game. Although Infinix tried to compensate for the very low ROM by including a MicroSD expansion slot  which is expandable to 32GB and an 8GB MicroSD card in the box there is no compensation for the RAM.

BATTERY/CONNECTIVITY 

The Race Eagle is a Dual SIM phone,SIM 1 can be used for data while the other SIM for voice calls.It has a 3G/2G radio embedded in it, we were only able to connect to EDGE and GPRS network easily, getting connected to 3G was really hard and the phone couldn't hold on to the 3G connection for long before reverting to EDGE. The BIGGEST let down with this phone has to be the battery. It comes with a 2000mAh lithium-ion battery 2000mAh battery seems sufficient right? but the reverse is the case in our experience the battery could barely last 6 hours we had to recharge the battery almost every 4 hours and it takes forever to charge, at first we thought the charger was faulty but after trying it with several USB chargers we were convinced the battery definitely had some flaws. 

PROS AND CONS

PROS:

• Stock Android look and Feel
• Free Data Connection for 6 months (Available for those that buy from MTN stores)
• FM Radio
• Google Maps
• Nigerian-centric Apps (Afrinolly, MTN Football)

CONS:

• Very Low RAM
• Bad Display Resolution
• Battery takes too long to charge and doesn't last
• No Screen Protection
• Gets hot after extensive Use
• Laggy performance

VERDICT: 5/10

For a phone that is being touted as the frontline phone from its manufacturers, the Race Eagle has failed woefully to impress us. this phone has failed to hit the mark with its specifications and it has also not lived up to the performance the manufacturers told us to expect from it. if you are looking for a budget phone that you wouldn't have to break the bank to buy and you are willing to overlook the CONS of the phone you can find it at various licensed distributors but you can get the best deal on this smartphone from MTN because of the freebies that come along with it. The phone presently goes between N34,000 AND N32,000 price range.

if you have this phone and you feel we haven't

done enough justice with this review please use the comment section to give us feedbacks

SOURCE: INFINIX MOBILITY

TNG....