infinix Hot 7

It’s Something You Cannot Ignore

Infinix, the online-only brand from Transsion Holdings, seems to be on a phone-launching spree for the last couple of months. And the interesting part is that instead of jumping from one price segment to the other, the company continues its aim to target the sub-rs 10,000 segment in India.

The recently-launched Infinix Hot 7 speaks volume about the company’s India-specific approach i.e. a feature-rich device in a budget price. The all-new budget offering from Infinix comes with dual rear as

well as front camera setup and a 4,000mah battery. Priced at Rs 7,999, the smartphone sports a metal body with a notch at the top of the display and thin bezels on the sides. But does this phone have what it takes to become a value for money device? Let’s find out.

Design

At first glance, the smartphone looks like the Infinix Hot 7 Pro, which was launched early at Rs 9,999 (we have reviewed it in our August issue). The Infinix Hot 7 sports a wide notch up front, a chin at the bottom, a dual rear camera setup aligned vertically, and a rear fingerprint sensor.

The phone offers a metal finish at the back which looks pretty smooth and strong. The power and volume buttons are on the right side, while the SIM tray is on the left. It can easily house two SIM and a microsd card in its card tray slot. The phone comes with micro-usb port at the bottom. There is also a 3.5mm headphone jack and loudspeaker grill. Like its predecessor Hot 7 Pro, the top panel is completely blank.

Overall, design of the phone gives it a slightly premium look. However, the company could have given a dew drop notch on the front instead of a wide notch for selfie camera. The smartphone offers a nice grip with slightly curved corners and edges, which makes it

comfortable to carry around. Although the phone comes in Midnight Black, Aqua Blue and Mocha Brown colour options, the blue one which I reviewed appealed to my eyes because of its graceful look.

Display

The Infinix Hot 7 boasts of a 6.19-inch, HD+ resolution display which makes it quite special at the given price.

The IPS LCD display sports a 2.5D glass protection and 19:9 aspect ratio that delivers decent job to give you a good viewing experience. Although it produces average colours, the display did not compromise on anything as it was quite gratifying. It is an ideal device for viewing images and videos.

If you are fond of watching shows and movies on OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, you can go for this phone without having a second thought. There is no issue of bad pixels with this device. What’s more, the colours appeared to be absolutely fine, in both low and high brightness, as they did not lose details.

Platform

The handset comes packed with 2.39GHZ octa-core Mediatek Helio P25 SOC processor, backed by 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage which can be expanded up to 256GB via microsd card with a dedicated slot. However, it’s an entry level processor and some of Infinix Hot 7’s competitors are already using Mediatek Helio P60 octa-core processor or even better. The Hot 7 runs on XOS 5.0 based on Android 9.0 Pie.

If we talk about the gaming performance, it’s fairly decent, as one can play most games without any difficulty on the phone but on low to medium graphics preset. It’s definitely not good for a graphicintensive heavy game that runs on full resolution settings. Anyway, what can you expect from a device of this price point, it’s definitely needless to say. You may face issues with the phone during long usage, as its response time increases and also heats up after regular usage of couple of hours.

The Hot 7 does a good job for a medium usage user, as it comes equipped with several built-in features such as silent screen recording mode, bike mode, Whatsapp mode (in this mode only Whatsapp uses data in the background), game boost, one-hand mode and a freezer where if any app is moved, it simply stops consuming data.

Cameras

The smartphone houses a dual camera setup at the back that includes a 13MP primary sensor along with an f/1.8 lens and a 2MP secondary sensor. The rear camera setup comes with smart features like PDAF, Dual LED Flash, AI Portrait, AI HDR, Night, Sports,

Blue Sky, and Text. The rear camera performs really well in the daylight. There are also features like LED Flash support and AI Beauty mode.

Similarly, the front-facing camera setup consists of a 13MP primary sensor with an f/2.0 lens and a 2MP secondary sensor. It goes without saying that a dual rear camera setup is very rare for a phone in any price segment. However, the front camera fails to create a magic.

Battery

In terms of power backup, the Infinix Hot 7 houses a 4,000mah battery with support for 10W fast charging via micro USB port. Like its predecessor, the phone easily lasts up to 2 days on a single charge to normal users, whereas for heavy users it can last an entire day, which is not bad. Here, all thanks go to the less demanding chipset and a low-resolution screen. The smartphone takes nearly 2.5 hours to charge fully from zero. Overall, the battery is at par with any other device offering the same level of power.

Conclusion

You can go for it, if you are looking for a budget smartphone that offers you decent features, smart camera and stylish design. Although it faces a tough competition in the given price segment, the Infinix Hot 7 is a pocket-friendly smartphone loaded with some really decent specs. ■