How Hot is the Infinix Hot 4? – A complete review

The Infinix HOT 4 which was released into the market has enjoyed a lot of unboxing and first impressions during the last couple of days. During my unboxing of the phone last week, I promised to publish the full review after I have fully determined the strengths and the weaknesses of the phone. So after playing with the phone for couple of days, I hereby present to you the complete review of the Infinix Hot 4.

Design                                                                                                              

The device share the same design language with the first iteration of the Hot series; the Infinix Hot x507. The Infinix Hot x507 was the first ever Infinix Hot device to be introduced by Infinix and the device sold very well then. Thereafter, they released the Hot 2, Hot 3 and now the Hot 4.

The Infinix Hot 4 is completely made of plastic material, the back is textured which Infinix called a 3D textured. The phone is a bit heavy thanks to the 4000mAh battery. However, it feels solid in the hands and for a phone that is 5.5-inch, it is a device that you want to hold. At the top of the phone you have the 3.5mm audio jack, the 8MP camera shooter, fingerprint scanner and the single LED flash. The speaker is positioned at the bottom and it tends to muffle off sound when playing songs on the phone. This is not my perfect placement for phones’ speakers, I love it at the posterior end.

Display

The phone boasts of 5.5-inch display with high definition resolution which is sharp and bright when browsing through photos and watching videos. Outdoor visibility is not very bright, so you have to put the brightness at maximum so as not to get your eyes strained.

Camera

The device is equipped with an 8MP back camera and 5MP selfie camera with flash. The 8MP rear camera shooter takes decent photos in bright and good lighting conditions. I took the phone out to test how well the rear camera performs under different lighting conditions. The images taken with the camera are good enough for social media sharing and should be handy for people who need an affordable device. Pictures I took under low light are however grainy and noisy but some can still be used for sharing with friends on social media.

The Camera app gives users the freedom to shoot in different modes. There is HDR, Professional, Panorama, night and beauty mode. However, the front camera only has three modes; the normal, beauty and wide-selfie modes. So for the selfie freaks, the Infinix Hot 4 can take wide angle selfie.

Software and specifications

The Infinix Hot 4 runs on Infinix XOS on top of android 6.0 marshmallow.  It’s powered by Mediatek 6580 quad-core processors with Mali-400MP graphical processing unit. There is 2 GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard memory which can further be extended to 32GB of external storage.

Navigating from one app to another is smooth with little or no lag. The XOS interface is clean and intuitive, especially the control panel which is now very much revamped unlike previous devices from Infinix.

Infinix introduced two new features on the control panel; the screen record and the high performance. With the screen record you can record what is happening on your screen and I think the high performance feature makes the device utilize more of the processor, so that tasks can seamlessly be executed. The control panel can also be customized the self-explanatory system UI tuner. This is a very good interface from Infinix.

Another feature worthy of mention is the magazine lock screen. The magazine lock screen is one of my best features on the phone. Every time you tap to wake the screen, you are presented with different wallpapers with amazing motivating quotes. I found myself tapping on the screen every time to check what is hot on the screen. This feature is very nice and many people who saw it liked it too. You can check the specifications of the phone from the unboxing I did earlier here.

Battery

The battery life of the Infinix hot 4 device is very good. It has a non-removable 4000mAh battery. It took me full day on Instagram, Facebook, snap chat and playing some of my favourite games like the first touch games, temple run and criminal case before the battery could be begging for refill. On a normal usage the battery could last more than a day.

Verdict

The device has its low and high points. If you don’t mind the bulkiness of the phone and the absence of 4G LTE, which is not a problem after all, there is no stable 4G services yet in the country, the Infinix Hot 4 is one of the most affordable devices you can buy right now. The battery life is impressive and the camera is decent for the price it is being sold.