Infinix Hot S Full Review: Hot or Not?

 

Wazzup Everybody? My apologies for disappearing for more than a month due to my blog account problems, but enough of that and will be back providing you with more Tech, Gaming, and Random Stuff.

 Infinix Mobile is kinda new brand for me, but it claims to be the best mobile brand in Nigeria because it also focus on bringing both affordability and quality. So, I reached out Infinix Mobile to check it out and ask for any review unit I can keep eye on, and that is the Infinix Hot S. Is it Hot or is it Not?

Package Includes: Infinix Hot S, Power Brick, MicroUSB Cable, Pair of In-ear Headphones,
Manual with the SIM ejection tool.

Infinix Hot S features a 5.2-inch 1080p IPS display with surprisingly great viewing angle for a phone at this price range. It’s rocking a MediaTek MTK6753 octa-core processor clocked at 1.3GHz, with Mail-T720 GPU, 2GB-3GB of RAM, 16GB-32GB of Internal Storage with MicroSD card support up to 128GB (RAM and Internal Storage may vary on where to buy, I’m reviewing the 3GB RAM + 16GB variant.) 13MP Rear Camera with dual-tone LED Flash, 8MP Front Camera with a LED flash, runs on XOS Chameleon which is based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow (but some other variants sell a Stock Android version.)

Design: The design doesn’t feel like a mid-range and feels like a solid flagship device because on the back houses an aluminum cover, I’m not too keen at metal-based cover because it’s slippery and more prone to scratches but because this is a 5.2-inch phone that is smaller than my usual 5.5-inch daily driver, I can grip firmly on one-handed use without any problem but your mileage may vary. It also houses the 13MP Rear Camera with flash and a fingerprint sensor below it which I’ll talk about in a second. On the front, we got a 5.2-inch display, a not-so small camera on the left beside the earpiece (which is great by the way,) and yes, I’m back using capacitive buttons again. Because I’m a person who prefer software buttons but this is not a huge curve for me since I’ve been into capacitive (or even physical navigation buttons) before. One complain about the physical buttons are the sensitivity, 15% of the time, the home button got pressed even if you’re tapping 2-3 inches away from it and redirects to Google On-Tap or Google Now, but I was hoping this is more of the review unit issue than the mass-produced retail one. But I was hoping XOS can provide a software button-option but more on that later.

Display: The Display is jaw-dropping, literally. PPI is great, images are sharp, colors are great and you don’t need to crank your brightness to its maximum setting to see in a broad daylight, because this thing is pretty, freaking bright. (Which is saved tons of battery surprisingly.)

Performance: Not a huge surprise that this will be fast because of the said chipset and RAM, It’s not the fastest CPU and GPU in the world but for the daily driver use, but it really blends well to the screen resolution, RAM, and battery life altogether. If you’re going to rely with benchmarks, Infinix Hot S gets a score of 585 (Single-core Score) and 2356 (Multi-core Score) at Geekbench 4.0.3 and 33708 on AnTuTu Benchmark which is great.

 Connectivity: WiFi and Bluetooth is nothing special, but 4G LTE works really well and the Call quality is pretty decent but I may need a louder earpiece but still, it didn’t bothered me in the long run.

Audio: Audio is excellent and well-balanced, it’s excellent because it sounded great for a mid-range phone and it doesn’t even matter if you’re using something like an Apple EarPods, but it gets better when you get a decent pair of headphones. Infinix Hot S supplies a stereo bottom facing speakers that is not as loud as my other daily driver phone but it didn’t distort the sound quality.

Outdoor Shot using Infinix Hot S on Auto Mode

Indoor Shot using Infinx Hot S on Auto Mode

Close-up ala Macro Shot using Infinix Hot S on Auto Mode

Camera: The camera performs well but it’s really hard to take to capture fast-moving objects in Auto Mode, but because of XOS Camera UI, it has a lot of features that is fun to play around with (and yes, they even have a Manual Mode or ‘Professional’ Mode which it may enable you to capture fast-moving subjects with the right settings.) The HDR mode in other hand works great that I just hope it can be set automatically on Auto Mode. The flash is nothing special but it works well when needed, but for the low-light situation, you need a steady hand to get right to perfect shots. The front camera shares the same story but it has a bright LED flash in the front that works surprisingly great for low-light selfies, it’s kinda grainy but somehow not noticeable if you zoomed it out a little, you can get more grainy shots when you get lesser light shots so you may need to get some light from the surroundings or the flash itself. 13MP and 8MP Rear and Front cameras respectively is still a pretty good deal overall for its price range, I know some other manufacturers can do better on a lower price, but for a smartphone who balanced quality and affordability, this is something I can’t complain.

Features: Starting with the Fingerprint sensor, I’m not too keen for the price range but this where my jaw dropped, It responses very well and it automatically unlocks your phone without even pressing the power button, It saves you a few seconds from powering on your screen, entering your pin or pattern and going to the recent app you’ve opened. It’s still faster over the smart unlock with my Motorola 360 because it just removes the hassle of entering a password. A huge factor for me for something I need for daily driver. XOS is actually a pretty good UI without compromising to its performance and battery. Although there’s some few bloatware that I didn’t like and I can’t uninstall, the built-in launcher is good but not too keen about it but you can download a new launcher anyway but didn’t do in my case for the sake of review, and the security feature is amazing that you can enable to require a PIN before even starting the Android / XOS itself which brought the similar security feature like TARA like a kindergarten artwork. Awesome. BUT XOS OTG support is something I’m concerned about, I can view files from my USB Flash drive but I can’t transfer files from or to USB flash drive even with a 3^rd Party File Manager with ES File Explorer, but this is more of the software problem over hardware.

Battery: Battery life was amazing on my daily use (but tested this without connecting an Android Wear watch,) It lasted me 6-8 hours on 10%-25% display brightness and 4G LTE on whole day which is another great factor for something I would use as a daily driver.

Bonus Points for keeping the Headphone Jack ;)

 And I'll end this with a conclusion to answer one thing: Is the Infinix Hot S any good? Yes. It’s not perfect but it’s pretty great for its price range of 6,990Php at Lazada. It’s somehow great but if you’re not a power user and you need something that will last at least 6-8 hours, fast access with fingerprint sensor and very good aesthetics, yes, this might be a perfect daily driver for you. This could be my perfect daily driver phone if it wasn't for the camera, but that's just me.

You can buy Infinix Hot S at Lazada for Php 6,990 now HERE! (Make sure to use that link so whenever you going to buy this phone, we get a small kickback to keep providing you more Tech, Gaming, and Random Stuff!)