INFINIX HOT 10

A Wholesome Package that Justifies its Price

Expanding its Hot series, Infinix recently launched Hot 10 smartphone in India. It comes in two RAM/ROM variants – 4GB/64GB and 6GB/128GB and they are priced at Rs 8,999 and Rs 10,999 respectively. Available in the colours of Ocean Wave, Amber Red, Obsidian Black and Moonlight Jade, the Infinix Hot 10 is packed with an array of features, latest design, redefined Mediatek chipset and a quad camera setup – all make this phone compete with some of the offerings from market leaders such as Xiaomi and Realme. But does it have what it takes to be a ruler in the budget segment? Let’s find out.

Design

The all-new Infinix Hot 10 sports a plastic body and frame, with 6.78-inch HD display on the front along with a punch-hole camera up top. The device will feel big in your palm, and like most of the phones with a large display, it cannot be used single-handedly. One needs to use both the hands to reach the top of the screen. Interestingly, the handset doesn’t feel heavy despite the fact that it comes equipped with a 5,200mah massive battery.

There is a quad-camera setup along with a fingerprint scanner up above the Infinix logo on the back. The sensor performs smoothly and unlocks the phone rapidly. You get a SIM tray with dual SIM support along with a dedicated memory card slot on the left, and there is a volume rocker and power button on the right. While the top of the phone is plain and simple, you’ll find a 3.5mm headphone jack, a mic, a micro-usb port for charging and a single mono speaker at the bottom.

Taken as a whole, the Infinix Hot 10 looks decent and will give you a premium feel, even though it is made of a plastic body.

Display

The smartphone flaunts a 6.78-inch HD display with a resolution of 720×1640. It stands out for its big display size with a 91.5% screento-body ratio and 480 nits brightness along with HD+ resolution on a 2.5D curved glass display and back. The thin bezels offer an almost all-display viewing experience.

Overall, the display is fairly bright and colourful that will make you enjoy scrolling social media, browsing the web and watching video on streaming platforms. Our overall experience on this phone was fairly good, especially when you are multitasking with split screen, gaming and binge-watching web series.

Platform

We had got 6GB/128GB RAM/ROM variant for review. The smartphone is backed by octa-core Mediatek Helio G70 SOC, paired

with an ARM Mali-g52 GPU. It runs on Android 10 with XOS 7 on top. With Android 10, you get system-wide dark mode, Focus mode (a compliment to Digital Wellbeing), new gesture navigation systems, boosted privacy, security and notifications (Grouped silent notifications) controls, better location permissions, Google Assistant “handles”, native screen recording, native desktop mode, QR codes to connect to Wi-fi plus more features. Likewise, XOS 7 also has some interesting features such as Social Turbo and Game Mode. Besides, there’s also the smart sidebar to easily access frequently used apps and tools.

If we look at its performance, it’s quite smooth, as the handset is fast and responsive to the commands. The device did it in instantaneously, be it while multitasking or opening an app. The user interface is reasonably decent and not complicated.

On the gaming front, the device did an excellent job, thanks to the Helio G70 processor. It handled graphic-intensive games pretty well and with much ease.

On the flip side, bloatware is present and at time you’ll get served ads in the form of pop-up notifications to download recommended apps.

Design and Performance

It’s quite frustrating as you need to delete or disable those apps, which you can also do by going into the Settings.

Cameras

The smartphone sports a quad rear camera setup that houses a 16MP primary sensor with an f/1.85 lens, 2MP depth sensor, and a 2MP macro shooter. Further, the camera setup includes a dedicated low light sensor. For selfies, the Infinix Hot 10 offers an 8MP camera sensor at the front in the punch-hole cut, with an f/2.0 lens.

There are also the dual selfie LED flashlights at the front to enhance lighting in your self-portraits and video chats. Additionally, the device comes preloaded with Aibacked features such as AI HDR, AI Portrait, AI 3D Face Beauty, Wide Selfie and an AR Animoji. The camera app is refined and opening the camera, focusing on an object or person and then snapping a shot is fast too. This also includes tapping on different objects in the viewfinder to change your focus.

In terms of camera performance, although I didn’t try it much, the photos shot in good light conditions were excellent, whereas under lowlight conditions the camera struggled a bit as the shots turned out to be too noisy and soft with very less details and not up to the mark results. The cameras, overall, are good and you’ll enjoy clicking pictures in different modes.

Battery

The Infinix Hot 8 is powered by a heavy-duty 5,200mah battery backed by Power Marathon technology that will keep the phone operational even after long hours of heavy usage. The battery can sustain a video playback of 23 hours, up to 41 hours of music playback, 18 hours of web surfing, 31 hours of 4G Talktime, and 66 days of stand-by time.

The Power Marathon technology ensures an additional battery backup of more than 25% when switched to an ultra power-saving mode.

The smartphone comes with 18W Fast Charge support that can get it 100% in just 2 hours and 30 mins.

The smartphone stands tall in this department, as the battery life is really great. With light usage, the device can easily last 2 days or even more. Shockingly, it has a micro-usb port for charging, especially at a time when the world has moved on to Type-c ports. However, it’s not an issue to be pointed out, as its competitors too are providing the same.

Conclusion

The smartphone sports a stunning design, delivers an impressive performance and has an excellent battery life. Cameras are something that needs to be improved, although they are not bad at this price point. Overall, Infinix has stepped up their game with this phone, which justifies its price. It’s a good option to buy if want to have a wholesome package in around 10k segment. ■

ramesh@mymobile.co.in