INFINIX s4

The New Selfie King at A Budget Price

Close on the heels of Smart 3 Plus launch (which we have reviewed in our June issue), Infinix, a smartphone brand from Transsion Holdings, recently launched the Infinix S4.

Priced competitively at Rs 8,999, the phone boasts of some attractive features such as a 4,000mah battery, triple camera setup and a 32MP AI selfie camera. The smartphone comes in shades of Nebula Blue, Twilight Purple and Space Gray and it has a 3-in-1 card slot that can support dedicated microsd card of up to 256 GB. Let’s check out the review of this device.

Design

The Infinix S4 flaunts a 6.2 inch HD+ display with a resolution of 1520x720, 2.5D curved glass and a waterdrop notch at the top for the front camera. It has a plastic build with a gradient finish at the back which fades off into black at the bottom and looks beautiful.

The smartphone features the volume rockers and power on/ off button on the sides, while on the left there is dual-sim and microsd card slot. On the bottom panel are the micro USB port, speaker grille and a 3.5mm audio jack. Minimal bezels are there on the sides and a relatively thin chin is located at the bottom of the phone. The phone attracts lots of smudges at the back panel due to its glossy finish, but thanks to a TPU case in the box that you can reduce smudges.

The fingerprint sensor, which is located at the back, is fast enough to quickly unlock the device. The phone measures 156 x 75 x 7.9 mm. It is quite lightweight at 155 grams and due to its compact size it perfectly fits into the hand. Taken as a whole, the company seems to have given a lot of thought to the design on the S4. The Infinix S4 definitely fares better than many others, if we take into account its price.

Display

On the display front, the 6.2HD+ display carries a waterdrop notch along with an 18:9 aspect ratio. The Infinix S4 comes with 500 nits of brightness and 1300:1 contrast ratio brings out the best of videos. The screen brightness is quite

amazing, as it is not unpleasant to stress your eyes and the auto brightness works very efficiently to adjust with the environment. The screen brightness can also be controlled manually.

There is an eye care mode on the smartphone as well for a comfortable reading experience at night. Overall, the screen is readable indoors but struggles a bit outdoors although the auto brightness feature works well.

Platform

If we talk about its performance, the S4 is powered by an octa-core 2.0GHZ, Mediatek Helio P22 chipset with Powervr GE8320 GPU. It comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, which is further

expandable up to 256GB via microsd card slot. In terms of the user interface, the Infinix S4 uses the XOS 5.0 Cheetah skin on top of Android Pie.

On the whole, the smartphone handles day to day usage quite well. However, some apps take some time to load and there is some lag while multitasking. In the gaming department, the Infinix device handles casual gaming very well but struggles when it comes to graphic intensive games.

On the connectivity front, the Infinix S4 offers Wi-fi 802.11 a/b/g/n,

GPS, Bluetooth v5.00, and Micro-usb. Sensors on the phone include an ambient light sensor, compass/ magnetometer, proximity sensor, and fingerprint sensor. It also offers face unlock technology for security purposes. The smartphone performs fairly well in this department.

Cameras

For photography purposes, the Infinix phone sports triple rear camera setup on the back with the combination of 13MP+2MP+8MP camera sensors along with a quad LED flash. On the front, it has a 32MP AI selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture and screen flash. There is a 2MP depth sensor and an 8MP ultra wide lens. The triple rear camera also has Bokeh settings along with AI beautification. Both the front and rear cameras support video up to 1080p.

Overall, the smartphone offers decent picture quality even in poor light conditions with the help of quad-led flash. It comes with auto scene detection across eight modes including portrait, text, night, backlight HDR, blue sky, sports and others. The S4 selfie camera has the biggest sensor size of 1/2.8inch in the segment and it uses 4-in-1 ultra pixel technology. Beauty mode analyzed through 256 facial points, AI Portrait is some of the features that place S4 considerably ahead of its competitors. It also clicks a good low-light selfie with f2.0 aperture and screen flash.

Battery

The smartphone is backed a 4,000mah battery which comfortably lasts for a day or so in normal use, which includes checking e-mails and websites, using social media apps and watching movies online. The phone does not support fast charging technology and takes nearly 2 hours to charge fully from zero per cent, which is quite good.

Conclusion

Although it offers one of the best cameras, an impressive design, a decent display and a powerful battery, it lags a bit behind in performance and gaming. The device offers good competition in the segment and it is a very suitable phone for a moderate user who is not into the intense gaming. The Infinix S4 might be a wonderful option for you, if you are looking for a good-looking device with decent specs in the budget range. ■