It is unrelated to the sensor, just the lens.
I've just been trying out the Nokia Camera app on my Lumia 630, and it seems to "cheat". The manual setting just before "infinity" is obviously more out of focus for a subject a couple of metres away than the infinity setting. So the infinity setting seems to actually be choosing the Hyperfocal distance instead, it is not choosing infinity focus at all. After I found out the true specs of the Lumia 525 camera, I worked out the hyperfocal distance to be about 110cm. The theory says this is the focal distance when you get maximum Depth of Field, because it is the closest distance the lens can be focused to while keeping objects at infinity acceptably sharp. So the depth of field area (the distances that will look like they are in focus) will start at half the hyperfocal distance and end at "infinity" (so everything as far as the lens can see).
However, Depth of Field is itself a cheat. Notice I said that Depth of Field is only the distances that look like they are in focus. There is only one distance that is really, truly in focus. All the other distances in the depth of field region are slightly out of focus, but on a screen or a photo print viewed at normal distances, the amount of out of focus is so slight that your eyes cannot see it. This is why the definition (which I stole from Wikipedia) says "acceptably sharp". Now, if you took that image, blew it up to the size of a billboard and stood a metre away, you'd then see that much less of the image than you originally thought is actually in focus. But the point is, no one looks at billboards from a metre away, except the guys that stick them up there! At that distance, they look awful, blurry and pixelated.
It is for this reason that a much better rule to stick to, is to focus of the furthest object away that you want to be sharp (so use Autofocus, half press the shutter, then tap on the thing in the distance on the screen). The thing you focus on will be super sharp, and everything closer up to 110cm away will be "acceptably sharp".