India's smartphone market in the sub-Rs 10,000 segment has seen ups and downs over the years. At one time, there were frequent smartphone launches in this price segment. However, fast forward to 2024, and it seems that finding a capable option that ticks most of the boxes has become quite difficult.
Infinix, which has been doing really well in both the budget and mid-range price segments, has introduced its new offering – hot 40i – Under Rs 10,000 in an effort to provide unprecedented value for money. Do its claims hold up? Read my review to find out.
Decision
The Infinix Hot 40i is a no-nonsense device that gets the basics right and delivers on a few key fronts. The highlights here are the phone's impressive display, useful software features, and the segment-leading 32MP selfie camera, which is unheard of in this price range. If you want to buy a feature-rich phone under Rs 10,000 that takes good selfies and will help you up your social media game, this could be a solid choice.
Design and performance
The Hot 40i comes with attractive aesthetics that the company describes as a “glow line” design. The brand says that the Glow Lining has vibrant and glowing colors with a soft finish. The standout color variant here is Starfall Green, but we got the Palm Blue variant of the Hot 40i, which looks a lot like the Rainbow Blue variant. smart 8 hd, The brand has used a smooth matte finish on the back which feels easy on the hand. The Hot 40i has a large triple camera housing on the back of the phone along with two camera sensors and a ring light.
The phone has a reflective finish on the sides and I felt comfortable with the grip offered here. At no point did the phone feel slippery. The power button with the embedded fingerprint sensor is located on the right side of the phone and can be easily accessed with the thumb. I had no problem reaching the volume rocker placed just above the power button with my thumb. Ergonomically speaking, the phone comes with a functional design that doesn't get in the way of your experience.
Thankfully, the phone also has a 3.5mm jack (something modern phones in the higher price range lack), which is located at the bottom of the phone.
Moving on to the display, the handset features a 6.56-inch IPS LCD panel with HD+ (1,612 x 720 pixels) resolution and a 90Hz refresh rate. In the display settings, you get the option to choose between a 60Hz refresh rate for longer battery life, a 90Hz refresh rate for a smoother visual experience, and an auto-switch option to automatically switch the refresh rate depending on the content . With thin bezels around the display and a punch-hole selfie camera, the handset manages to offer an impressive 89.70 percent screen-to-body ratio. I found the quality of the display to be impressive, and I think the only aspect of the display that could be improved is the peak brightness, which sits at 480 nits…despite that number being quite common in this particular segment.
camera
The Hot 40i sports a 50MP primary camera at the back with an AI sensor and ring flash. Before we discuss the camera performance, let's first talk about the modes on offer. When clicking photos, you get the standard Photo, Beauty, Portrait and Super Night options from the default camera app's home screen. While recording video. You get video and short video options.
In Beauty mode, you get the option to either choose AI smart beauty effects or manually adjust filters like smoothing skin, adjusting skin tone, slimming faces and enlarging eyes. The camera app also offers Panorama mode, Document (for clicking photos of documents), Ultra HD, AR Shot (lets click shots with animal-themed filters), Time-lapse and Slow motion modes. In Pro mode, the app lets you adjust EV, ISO, white balance, AF and other settings to ensure that you click photos exactly as you want. In all modes except Portrait mode, you get the option to use 2x digital zoom. You also get the option to rearrange the modes if you want specific camera modes to appear on the home screen of the default camera app.
In my experience, the Infinix Hot 40i managed to click good photos in daylight (especially with the 50MP mode on), but the color of these images is a bit warm. There is also some grain visible in shots taken in low-light scenarios, but using the ring flash, you can click some good photos. You can take a look at the camera samples below to get a better idea of the optical performance of the phone.
To give you a better perspective of the camera performance, I clicked some shots with the Itel P55+ and Infinix Hot 40i to compare the camera quality offered by both these phones. I preferred the color accuracy offered by the P55+ between the two. You can also see the warm tones in the camera sample clicked through Hot 40i here.
On the front of the phone, you get a segment-leading 32MP selfie camera, which is also supported by a flash. Not only this, thanks to the 90-degree wide-angle lens, you can include more of your friends in your selfie. In this price segment, where most brands usually focus on getting the basics right, this combination of features is useful. The high-resolution front camera is capable of clicking detailed photos and in low light, the front flash helps. Although the latter can overexpose subjects in some scenarios, the end results are consistently better than other phones without flash at this price point.
Talking about videos, you get the option to shoot up to 1080p resolution at 30fps. You can select the 'Fingerprint Shooting' option to start recording video from the power button. The phone also lets you record slow-motion videos at 120fps to help you capture shots with a fun perspective. In my use, the video quality was good and I liked the slo-mo and time-lapse options.
An interesting mode here is 'Short Videos'. Here, you get pre-designed templates to use and shoot videos that can be shared on social media channels. This is a useful tool for those of you who create content for social media, or want your profile to stand out. Seeing as how more modes may be added with future updates, I believe this is a feature that should ideally be available on all modern phones, regardless of price range.
Display and Software
The Infinix Hot 40i is powered by the UNISOC T606 SoC, which is an octa-core chipset with two A75 cores clocked at 1.6GHz and six A55 cores clocked at 1.6GHz. The handset comes with Mali-G57 MC1 GPU, which handles the graphics performance. The phone is available with 4GB and 8GB RAM options (which can be expanded up to 16GB with the RAM expansion feature) and the two storage options available are 128GB and 256GB. While the storage options on offer are certainly impressive, it's important to note that the UNISOC T606 isn't the most impressive chipset in this price range. The iTel P55 offers a 5G-capable MediaTek Dimensity 6080, while the Realme C53 in the same price bracket comes with a UNISOC T612. Both of these chipsets outperform the T606 in benchmarks. However, in my usage, I did not face any major lag or stuttering issues with the Hot 40i. I also played demanding games like Battlegrounds Mobile India, Asphalt 9: Legends and NBA 2K Mobile and the phone managed to handle these games effectively. I also didn't face heat related issues.
In the AnTuTu benchmark test, the phone managed to score 2,66,030, while on the Geekbench benchmark, it scored 376 in the single-core test and 1389 in the multi-core test. The phone also handled multitasking well and apps loaded in the background almost instantly, picking up where I left off as soon as I switched back on them.
The handset runs the XOS skin based on Android 13 out of the box and includes some great features. The main feature here is the Magic Ring, which is reminiscent of Apple's Dynamic Island on the iPhone and essentially creates a bubble around the selfie camera to display information in an interesting way. You can choose to customize the Magic Ring's functionality using toggles for aspects like face unlock, background calls, charging animation, charge completion reminder, and low battery reminder. It adds a touch of innovation to the user interface.
Apart from this, you also get other features of Infinix like MemFusion (to increase RAM space), Smart Panel (to provide access to common functions), Social Turbo (which includes useful features like voice recorder and video retouching for WhatsApp). are), To guide you towards healthy digital habits). XBoost, which is a gaming engine developed by the brand itself, offers one-tap optimization options while playing games to give you consistent performance.
The phone also has some “intelligent features” that aim to make your life easier by learning your habits. These include recommendations for services based on your phone usage, speeding up app launches by learning the apps you use most often and predicting the app you use next, and real-time payment reminders, bedtime reminders, and more. Involves providing.
The phone comes with 'Folax' voice assistant that lets you make calls, take photos, play music and set alarms, even when you're not connected to the internet. It also has a 200 percent super volume booster feature that lets you boost the volume for a solid omnidirectional sound effect. This can come in handy if you're trying to watch a video in a situation where there's a lot of ambient noise.
As far as connectivity options are concerned, it has NFC support, 4G, a dual nano SIM + microSD card slot, and a USB Type-C port for charging.
Battery and charging speed
The Infinix Hot 40i packs a 5,000mAh battery that comes with 18W charging support. Except for the Realme C53 and Moto G24 Power, which offer 30W+ fast charging, this is pretty much the standard charging speed you'll get in the sub-Rs 10,000 segment. Still, it feels slow.
The battery capacity ensures that you can easily use the handset for more than a day with regular usage and up to two days with light usage. In our PCMark battery test, the phone lasted 18 hours and 52 minutes.
As per the brand's claims, the Ultra Power Saving Mode can deliver 24 hours of standby backup and 2 hours of calling at 5 percent battery level, which can be extremely useful in a pinch.
final call
First talking about the competition in this price segment, the POCO M6 stands out for its performance, and may be worth a look, while those looking for 5G support may consider the Itel P55 5G. However, the main highlight of the Infinix Hot 40i is its front camera. When people ask for phones with capable selfie cameras, we usually have to look towards the higher price segment. Priced at Rs 9,299, the Hot 40i helps bridge this gap and comes across as a solid option for selfie lovers at an affordable price. The phone also brings a number of useful software features that improve the user experience, and hence, comes out as a good buy in the sub-10k segment.
Editor's Rating: 7.5/10
reason to buy
- Display quality is quite good for the price
- 32MP selfie camera capable of taking detailed photos
- battery life is good
- Magic ring adds a novelty factor
reason not to buy
- slow charging speed
- performance could be better
