Infinix Hot S3 Review - The NEW Affordable Powerhouse?


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Infinix Hot S3 review |
Infinix Hot S3 Specs
Unboxing / Accessories
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Inside the box |
Note: If you are looking for a high-quality video unboxing, check out the work of my good friend Raffy found in this link.
Build Quality / Design
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Decent build! |
Build is alright for the price!
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3.5 mm headphone jack slot on top |
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Mic, micro USB, and single speaker below |
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SIM slot at left |
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Hooray for triple slots! |
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Textured power button and the volume rocker |
Design-wise, it is like the ZenFone Max Plus M1. It has the nearly the same screen size with tall 18:9 aspect ratio. Bezels on the side are quite slim, but bottom and top bezels are considered as thick for a phone with "near bezel-less" design. The phone can still be considered as small for a device with 5.65-inch "big" display.
18:9 is the new standard!
Other than that, this phone is quite a looker for the price. It has generous curves, minimal camera protrusion, and pretty slim 8.54 mm profile for a handset with big 4,000mAh of non-removable battery.
Display Quality
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Decent looking 18:9 screen |
One of the highlights of this device is its trendy 5.65-inch 18:9 IPS screen with HD+ 1440 x 720 resolution. It also has a "sharp enough" pixel density of 285 ppi.
Decent looking modern screen for the price!
Colors are quite good and accurate for the price. It isn't just as punchy and crispy versus the higher-end screens. But, that's fine! Contrast and blacks are acceptable and viewing angles are okay.
Sunlight legiblity is decent, though expect the screen to be quite reflective. Autobrightness works and it even has a bluelight filter to prevent eye strains found in the display settings.
Other features included in the display settings are the font size adjustment and ambient display mode for notifications.
However, not all apps are optimized for the 18:9 screen yet. But most likely, that will change in the near future.
Audio Quality
Below, this device has a single "loud" speaker setup. It is decent in loudness and has enough details. Just don't expect it to be as loud, full, and crisp sounding compared with the higher-end speakers. Bass is almost non-existent just like most budget phones.Audio quality though your favorite set of Hi-Res ceritified in-ear monitors like the Baseus Encok H07 is good. It has more thane enough bass, crisp in detail and good in resolution, and close to balanced in sound. The Hot S3 can nicely drive it around 60 to 70 percent volume.
Just don't expect it to produce the sparkle and wow factor found on true HiFi portable audio players.
Microphone performance for calls is acceptable to decent. For video recordings, the audio we captured is considered as decent for the price too. It only has a single microphone though.
Battery Life
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Great battery performance! |
The other highlight of this handset is its big 4,000mAh battery capacity. Unfortunately, our PC Mark work battery life test won't work. So, we recorded the screen on time.
Great battery performance!
We were able to use the phone for a total of 18 hours on a single charge or 7 hours and 5 minutes of screen on time from 100 to 2 percent.
For a phone with big 5.65-inch display, that score is impressive! The more impressive part? We were using the phone heavily the day we recorded its battery performance.
In particular, 4G LTE data is on all the time and sometimes even the WiFi hotspot is turned on. We even watched a lot on YouTube with volume on and played some battery draining games with audio on.
In comparison, most of the 4,000mAh phones we have only has 5 to 6 hours of screen on time.
This phone even has an "ultra power saving" mode turns your smartphone into a basic phone that turns off all the battery draing functions to save power.
Moreover, this handset has a reverse charging feature also known as the power bank mode via USB OTG.
Charging time from 0 to 100 percent is 2 hours and 30 minutes. It could have been faster, but that is still not bad for a phone with big battery capacity on a budget.
Camera
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13MP goodness? |
Next is its cameras. At the back, the Hot S3 highlights a 13MP snapper with f/2.0 aperture size, PDAF autofocus and dual tone LED flash.
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The camera interface |
It has several useful modes like the HDR, few filters, panorama, night, face beauty and the professional mode.
The professional mode will allow its users to adjust the metering, EV (-3 to +3), shutter (1/3000 to 6s), ISO (100 to 1550), WB, and focus.
It even has grids and levels for guides that you can use even if you are not using the professional mode.
Camera performance is decent to good!
For the price, the main camera of the Hot S3 is decent to good. Shooting speed is not the fastest around, but it is still less than at least 1/3 of a second. Focus speed is okay. But, it will slow down a when you are targeting objects closely for your macro shot especially if the lighting is bad.
Picture quality is alright. It is as good or better than most at this price point. Details are far from grainy, close-up shots has shallow depth (good background blur), and colors are okayish considering the price.
Tone is a bit warm and punchy, but it can get washed when you turn the HDR mode on. We will only suggest the use of HDR on "against the light" shots.
Indoor performance is quite nice as well. Lowlight is far from great as expected. It is usuable when you know how to use the professional camera mode and the dual tone LED flash properly.
However, it doesn't have the pro mode anymore. But that's fine. In return, it goes with a face beauty mode with portrait or bokeh mode for depth of field.
The selfie camera has no tap to focus anymore as well. Fortunately, it can still detect your face pretty quick. Shooting speed is average (due to the large pixel size) and you must have steady hands to prevent blurry snaps.
Picture quality is considered as great for the price. It produced one of the sharpest selfies under PHP 10K. Colors are quite nice too. The face beauty mode could over beautify your face if you slide it up over level 3. The depth coming from the portait mode is isn't that deep, but its edges could be considered as clean for the price. It isn't adjustable though.
Lowlight performance is acceptable. It even has a soflight flash or hard flash mode.
Selfie Camera Samples
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Well-lit portrait mode |
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Well-lit face beauty level 5 |
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Lowlight |
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Lowlight with flash |
For selfies, the 20MP snapper did a slightly better job for videos in terms of color reproduction. But, it isn't as stabilized as the back camera.
Overall, the video shooting performance of this phone is still considered as decent for the price.
Video Samples
Performance
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Good benchmark scores! |
Inside, this phone boasts a 1.4GHz 64-bit Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor with Adreno 505, 3GB RAM, and 32GB expandable storage. In India, there's a variant with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. Sadly, we won't have it here in the Philippines.
Pretty high specs for the price!
But fortunately, the specs of this phone is considered as HIGH for the price! Why? Most Snapdragon 430 devices with the same RAM and ROM configurations are found in the over PHP 10K range. Look at the likes of Nokia 5 and Huawei Y7 Prime. Again, the Infinix Hot S3 is priced at just PHP 7,999!
Actual performance is GREAT overall! It is snappy and more than usable overall. It can even multitask decently. Gaming performance is also good. Running light games is breeze. NBA 2K18 is also playable at medium or high settings with minimal frame drops. The thermal management of this device is also nice. It barely heats up even if I'm playing while on 4G LTE mode.
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The Oreo based XOS 3.0 skin |
Personally, I'm not really a fan of the XOS, but Infinix made an effort to make it more than usable. It is now better than ever. Icons are still not the most modern looking out there, but it is quite customizable overall.
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Gestures and the Freezer app |
Like most stock Oreo devices, you may swipe from the buttom up to view the app drawer. It still has the pull down menu with many shortcuts such as opening the data, hotspot, scrollshot, screen record, night light, cast, location, screen record, and more.
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Phone Master app |
It is also rich in features and gestures (like double tap to wake). It even has multi-window mode for multitasking, Freezer app where you can place the apps you are not using and save RAM, and the Phone Master to tune-up your phone and keep it fast.
However, it has a number of bloats. Some of them are removable, some are not. We recommend to uninstall or disable the bloatwares you don't need.
The fingerprint scanner is isn't the fastest around, but it works. It is also quite reliable. It has no face unlock feature though.
Going to the telephony experience, signal reception is mostly strong. LTE signal is stable. It doesn't have the Band 28 700MHz LTE support for better indoor LTE signal reception though.
Bluetooth is also fine, has and LED light indicator as well, OTG support, and gyroscope sensor.
The Infinix Hot S3 is a very capable smartphone for the price overall.
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