Infinix Note 30 vs Redmi Note 12

If you are in the market for a decent mid-range smartphone in Kenya then you’rre both in a good place and a bad place. A good place because there’s so much to choose from. A bad place because almost everything you are presented with is very good and you’ll most likely end up being confused.

But, that’s why we exist, right? To be able to guide you towards making the correct choice when it comes to things like these.

Now, in our execution of that role, we are looking at two very good smartphones that, at their launch, cost just about Kshs 1,000 of each other. They’re almost the same price Those devices, as the headline already made you aware, are the Infinix Note 30, launched and made available in the Kenyan market last month, and the Redmi Note 12, launched and made available in the local market a month earlier. and which we have since had a look at and used in depth.

Redmi is Xiaomi’s budget smartphone sub-brand and, as such, you can always expect a very good balance of features and pricing. Balancing between features and pricing is exactly what has made the Transsion Group, the mother company of popular smartphone brands such as Tecno and Infinix, a big success the world over. Infinix is the Transsion Group’s focus on providing smartphones (and other consumer electronics products) that are appealing to a younger demographic. What that obviously means is that the phones have to have features that will get the attention of that crowd as well as priced at a point that they are able to reach.

Both points of convergence bring us to the two aforementioned devices.

From our experience, the devices have obvious differences in approaches that are unique to each of their makers both in the hardware and the software as well as some areas where one manages to outshine the other completely, as you can see in the specifications table below.

For instance, while the Redmi is quite the darling and is a pleasure to use, you quickly run into the limitations of a 128GB storage when you do your best to take full advantage of its good cameras. When you’re doing the same on the Infinix Note 30, you get to enjoy twice the storage!

The Redmi should be having options to get you all the way up to the same level but you don’t get that in our market. You’ll have to get the Redmi Note 12S for that. Or the more pricey Pro. Both devices do play around with virtual RAM so you can easily get a boost when you need to.

On paper, the cameras on the two devices appear different with the Redmi getting an upper hand. Is that the same case when you use the devices in the real world. I don’t know since I have only used, extensively, the Redmi Note 12.

On the other hand, if the experience I have had on the Infinix Note 30 VIP‘s cameras is anything to go by (though it has a different set of lenses), then users of the Note 30 are in for a treat!

As far as the displays go, the Infinix has the larger panel but they both share the same refresh rate

When it comes to the sound, you get tuning by JBL on those dual speakers on the Infinix Note 30, something the Xiaomi device can’t match.

On the other hand, the Redmi gets you an infrared (IR) blaster, allowing you to control your TV, home theatre/soundbar and other devices without needing their remote controller. It’s not the same but that should count for something, right?

Something else that a reader of Android Kenya will probably care about more than other people out there is NFC. The contactless transmission tech is built into the Infinix Note 30 but is nowhere to be found on the Xiaomi.

Then, there’s Infinix’s AllRound FastCharge which is a game changer. It promises fast charging speeds of up to 260W. On a device that’s quite low in the Infinix pecking order, the Note 30 manages to peak at just 45W but that’s still very respectable. Especially given that its rival in this showdown, the Redmi Note 12, can only do up to 33W fast charging. Did I say that you even get wireless charging on this champ? Yes, the Infinix has support for 15W wireless fast charging. How about that?

Now, before you get too excited, Infinix reserves the out-and-out wireless charging for the Note 30’s other siblings – Note 30 Pro, VIP… For itself, you have to use a case that, in some markets (like Nigeria, we don’t know if the same is the case in Kenya), comes in the device’s box. Still, that’s better than nothing at all, right?