In this article, I will be unboxing and giving you my full video review of the Infinix Hot 10S and stay till the end as I will be giving a brand new sealed phone for you as well, so don’t miss out!

 

Unboxing

So the unboxing process and what comes inside of the box is a little different than what you would see these days.

Firstly, the box is already looking pretty unique, where it comes in green and orange at the bottom. There are the RAM and storage specs on the top right, the Infinix logo at the top in the middle and “Hot 10S” below that and then Helio G85 towards the bottom right.

At the back, there are more specifications of the phone available over there.

Opening the box, you will find the phone with a sticker on top, that states the key USPs of the phone.

Below that, there is the Customer service card, or for this case, it is a sticker. Underneath, you’ll find a smaller white box with the SIM ejector pin on the outside.

And then inside that, there is a 1 dollar bill looking paper, which is a unique welcome note to join Infinix’s Xclub community.

Then there are the user manuals, the screen protector and a hard TPU phone case.

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Below that, you will find a USB-A to a Micro USB cable… (yeap, I will get to that later) and a 10-watt charger.

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Specifications

Next, looking at the specs, it comes with the Mediatek Helio G85 Chipset, surely perfect for gaming enthusiasts out there, with the Mali G52 MC 2 GPU.

The variant that I have is the 4 gigabytes of RAM with 64 gigabytes of storage. It comes shipped with Android 11 with Infinix’s XOS version 7.6 skin.

Now before I go forward, just to give you a quick background on Infinix as a brand and its lineup.

Firstly, Infinix is a brand based in Hong Kong that has their R&D coming from France and while they have only recently penetrated the Malaysian market, they have been very well known across 40 countries such as countries from Asia, Latin America to the Middle East and to Africa as well.

In terms of their phone’s lineup, in a nutshell, they have 4 variants in total, which are:

• the Infinix Zero variant for the high-end users,
• the Note series for mid-level to power users,
• the Hot series for gaming enthusiasts, and 
• the Smart series for basic usage

 

Build Quality

From the phone’s design and build’s perspective, my first impression was that the phone did feel very large in my hands, but surprisingly pretty comfortable.

The sides are just a tad bit thicker since its housing a very large 6000 milliamps of battery and the finish of the frame was similar to the back part of the phone.

And speaking of the rear, Infinix claims that they have used a Laser Micro Lithography Technology to create this sort of shimmering appearance, which based on what I see in real life, is very reminiscent of a snake’s skin design but a glossy finish.

The one which I have is in the 95 Degree Black and there is also the Morandi Green color option here in Malaysia as well.

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The camera arrays are towards the top left and the camera bump is pretty thin, which means the phone will barely wobble if typed on a surface.

And yes, as seen at the back there is the rear fingerprint sensor, a little “old school” but I liked a physical fingerprint sensor, whether it’s for the back or the side, is still the fastest compared to an in-display fingerprint sensor.

Next looking at the ports and buttons, looking down below, there is a Micro USB port…….okie, now this is “old school” too but it’s not something that I do not prefer as Micro USB ports should already be eradicated in 2021 but considering its price, I MIGHT let that go, but…only for now.

Then you will find the mono firing speakers and the headphones jack.

Both the power button and the volume rockers are on the right

And the SIM and micro SD card slot are on the left with a dedicated card slot as well.

So using this phone daily felt great since I have used to and always been a fan of large-screen phones and even though the phone comes with a hard TPU case, I still used the phone without it to really appreciate the phone’s overall design and build.

 

Screen

And speaking of the large screen, let’s look at the display’s specs.

The phone has a large 6.82-inch HD+ display, with a resolution of 720 x 1640 pixels, so yes you may call this a 720p display but I honestly didn’t even think it was because the screen quality was surely better than other 720p display that I have seen on some other smartphones within this price range.

And another great feature that even makes me feel like the device had a decently great screen is the fact that it comes with a 90-hertz refresh rate and 180-hertz touch sampling rate, making it a pretty responsive screen when using it daily and you can also change it to a variable refresh rate or go down to 60 hertz as well.

Now since the phone comes with a huge battery, I decided to watch lots of videos on the phone, both on YouTube and Netflix and I have no complaints as the phone had some nice and vibrant colors, once again, giving other smartphones within this price a run for their money.

Then to further enhance your viewing experience, there is the Video Assistant feature where you can choose to toggle additional features like rejecting an incoming call, go into do not disturb mode, and other features like taking a screenshot, screen recording, and many more.

Cameras

Next looking at the phone’s camera’s specs, it comes with:

• a 48-megapixel f 1.8 aperture main camera lens,
• a 2-megapixel f 2.4 depth sensor, 
• and another AI Lens, which is apparently a dedicated lens for AI purposes

So as I mentioned at the beginning of this video that this phone is more dedicated to gamers, so I would say that given the price of the phone once again, my expectations were pretty low.

48-Megapixel Mode

Starting from the 48-megapixel mode, here is where it is how you’d expect it to be with extreme details in your shots, with a huge 8000 x 6000 dimensions that allows you to zoom and cropped in accordingly if you want to.

Main Lens

As for the main lens, you will get some great shots too, with excellent dynamic range, especially if the light is shining towards your favor, but it was pretty decent with backlight situations too, with the AI camera mode in the app.

Portrait Mode

As for the portrait mode, the subject to background blur was really good, but with decent edge detection, as seen at the edge of my hair but it does better on objects.

Night Mode

There is a Super Night mode in the camera app, where it really brings up the overall highlights when taking photos at night or during low light, where I prefer the AI camera instead where it had more balanced nighttime photos.

Front Camera

Then as for the front camera, it has an 8-megapixel lens.

Selfie

Looking at the regular selfie shots, with bright daylight outdoors, it looked really nice as seen over here.

Portrait Selfie

Then the subject to background blur for the Portrait Selfie was great too but similar to the rear camera, the edge detection is sometimes a hit or miss.

AI Modes

There are also some AI modes for this selfie camera in the app if you guys are into that.

Video Recording

As for the video recording, it can go up to 2k resolution both the rear and the back, where it did seem like it was like an upscale of 1080p although my Mac does recognize it as a 2k resolution file (Check out the results on my YouTube video!)

Video quality for the rear was decent but image stabilization is not the best trait.

And it was pretty much the same for the front camera as well, and there is also a portrait video mode, which had decent subject to background blur.

Sound Quality

As for the phone’s sound quality, it comes with mono firing speakers towards the bottom as mentioned.

And here is where the phone does surprise me because it had quite nice mids to highs, and vocals were quite pronounced, the bass was not as apparent and the volume was pretty decent at 89.6 dB.

Now, if you are enjoying this video so far, do like and subscribe to my YouTube channel, if you haven’t done so.

 

Software

In terms of software, backed by Android 11, with XOS 7.6, the overall UI was pretty refreshing to me since it is my first time using an Infinix phone daily.

Navigating through the menus wasn’t difficult and quite smooth sailing but it does some time getting used to it, where for example, to change between the virtual navigation to the gesture navigation, it was under System settings, instead of having a dedicated menu for navigation.

The security features were pretty polished, which was great to know where the phone’s fingerprint unlock was pretty snappy and there is also a face unlocks which also unlocks quickly even under low light.

And there are also other minor cool features like being able to take a photo by touching the fingerprint sensor, which is sweet since the phone is pretty large as mentioned earlier.

There are pre-installed Google apps and even Gboard as the default keyboard which was also a great nod towards people who use Google apps a lot.

Although it comes with 4 gigabytes of RAM, I had no issues with loading websites or social media apps and the 90-hertz refresh rate certainly helped with its overall fluidity as well.

 

Gaming

So since this phone is more catered towards gamers especially with the Mediatek Helio G85 chipset, naturally a more thorough test on gaming was needed.

COD Mobile

Firstly on COD mobile, the gameplay was smooth during the entire gameplay with High Settings, no lag, and no overheating issues but just a tiny bit warm during hours of gameplay.

PUBG

Then on PUBG Mobile, the game ran great at graphics set to HD with High FPS, where the overall gameplay didn’t feel laggy and there were no signs of stuttering as well.

Mobile Legends

And among all the games, the phone indeed shined on Mobile Legends, where the phone is very optimized with this game at the highest settings.

The XO studio software opens up when the game is launched, which boosts the overall performance, other than the gaming mode for the games tested above. So yes this phone’s gaming experience on Mobile Legends was flawless indeed thus having their special collaboration with them as well.

 

Battery

As for the phone’s battery, the phone comes with a massive 6000 milliamps of battery as mentioned earlier and based on my usage, I got a massive 12 hours and 45 minutes when I was at 10% battery, with all the settings at default, with heavy gaming and playing lots of videos. So you would expect to get even more if you don’t really push the phone to its limits. 

And since the phone comes with this kind of price range, there is no fast charging, but with a huge sized battery, do you really need fast charging?

And of course, there is no wireless charging as well.

But again, call me “old school” but I do appreciate the light indicator when it’s charging.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have to say that I was indeed very impressed with the Infinix Hot 10S, coming at only RM449 for this same variant that I have, I personally thought that I was going to struggle to use it daily, because of the 4 gigabytes of RAM and I happily am proven wrong.

Infinix says that this Hot 10S variant is catered for gamers and I would totally echo that, so for you gamers out there, you want an extremely affordable smartphone that games well. Then this phone should be your choice, especially with the HUGE battery capacity too.

But if you are the kind of person who needs a powerful camera, and needs options like fast charging and more on the “latest technology”, then you might want to consider looking at the other Note or the Zero variants, which I am looking forward to reviewing when I get my hands on them.

—

Alright, as mentioned during the introduction, I will be giving away a brand new sealed version of the phone to you and yes, this is also open to International subscribers who are not from Malaysia as well. So head to my YouTube video description, where you will find all the information over there. My name is Adam Lobo, thank you so much and good luck for the giveaway!

Get the Infinix Hot 10S at the link below:- ​

https://invol.co/cl58bda

 

Giveaway Information:

Head to my Instagram Profile to find out! @adamlob0