Infinix Hot 7 review: Overview

The Infinix Hot 7 is the newest upgrade to Infinix’s most popular smartphone series, the Hot series. The new Hot 7 does not present anything you haven’t seen on recent devices but it does perfectly well to meet today’s standards while maintaining a low price tag.

With its 6.2 inch full view display, the Hot 7 enters the smartphone arena well-connected with support for dual SIM connectivity and big battery to keep the show running longer. However, the low price tag brings a long a few caveats such as low support for 4G and luck of fast charging which are now popular among smartphone users.

The Infinix Hot 7 has gotten some huge upgrades practically all along the spec sheet compared to the Hot 6. The 7 has better cameras, bigger storage and RAM options, bigger screen and ditches Android Go.

How does the Infinix Hot 7 perform in real life and is it worth of its Hot name? Let’s find out.

In the box:

  • A micro USB cableRegular wall chargerIn-ear headphonesTransparent back coverPlastic screen protectorUser manual and warranty cards

Infinix Hot 7 review: Design

The Infinix Hot 7 is a 6.2” phone that is narrow enough for fairly comfortable use, and it’s not too thick either. The polycarbonate back cover of the Hot 7 keeps it fingerprint free for the most part, though, it feels cheap in the hands.

The Hot adopts the design language that we have seen Infinix use on devices like the Hot 6, Infinix S3 (review). Nonetheless, the polycarbonate back reduces the number of times you have to wipe the device clean as seen on fingerprint magnet devices such as the Infinix Note 5 (review ) and Hot S3X that have glossy backs. The nature of the back also gives the phone better grip in-hand compared to slippery devices like Hot S3X and Camon 11 Pro.

In terms of size, the Infinix Hot 7 measures 155.4 × 75.9 × 8.4 in height, width and thickness respectively. While the device packs a big 6.2 inch display, Infinix does a great job in fitting it in a tiny body and therefore the Hot 7 is a more ergonomic phone that is easier to use. At the top of the display is a notch that houses the 8MP front camera, speaker, sensors and front LED light.

The Hot 7 features a headphone jack on the top of the edge and hence you won’t need to buy any connectors to enjoy music on the phone. The physical buttons are on the side: the lock key on the right is easy to reach. It protrudes nicely and has a nice texture that makes it easy to press and to differentiate it from the neighbouring volume locker button which is right above it.

The left side is kept free of any buttons while the bottom contains the USB 2.0 port and the microphone. The loud speaker is located at the back of the phone. Also at the back is the fingerprint scanner and vertically aligned dual camera setup and LED flashlight. The Camera forms a little bump out of the rest of the phone, therefore, the Hot 7 is not steady when lying on its back on a flat table. However, the included cover unifies the protrusion.

Infinix Hot 7 review: Display

Infinix always puts good (not great) displays on their budget devices. The Hot 7 features a bright, vivid, and mostly sharp 6.2-inch full view 720p display. The bezel-less display with a notch is a beauty in the hands, especially for the notch lovers.

The Infinix Hot 7 comes with a large and overall tall decent 6.2 inch HD IPS LCD display with a resolution of 720 x 1500 pixels. Images and text appear sharp even in bright sunlight. While higher-end devices nowadays come with much sharper displays, the screen on the Hot 7 is fairly solid.

In terms of colours, this is a very respectable display for the mid-range price category of the Hot 7. Colours are punchy and undeniably vivid and lively, something that will be considered a plus by most users. However, those who care about perfect colour accuracy would notice it’s a bit on the cold side, plus there is some oversaturation.

Viewing angles are still great but colors (also still viewable) get a little washed out in bright light. However, the display is very comfortable to use in extremely low light or at night without too much screen glow that tires the eyes. A user can reduce the screen brightness to the lowest and also engage ‘Eye-Care” mode which filters out blue light. The result is a dimmer screen with a kind of sepia filter that makes it comfortable to read from in darkness. The Eye-care mode can be scheduled to turn on automatically at sunset and off at sunrise of custom times.

The display is not toughened with recent Gorilla glass and hence you may need to protect it from accidental falls using a third party glass screen protector and a thicker cover.

Infinix Hot 7 review: Interface and Functionality

With Android 8.1 Oreo and XOS Honeybee v4.1.0, the Infinix Hot 7 interface doesn’t look so different from the 2018 lineup of Infinix devices. Still, it runs fine and gets the job done well.

The Infinix Hot 7 ships with Android 8.1 Oreo with Infinix’s usual XOS skin on top. However, with the Android Q treat on the Android cookery horizon, it’s disappointing to see a now dated version of Google’s operating system on board. It would have been great to see the Hot 7 boot Android Pie out of the box. Sadly, we are not hopeful that Infinix Mobility will update the phone to Android 9 or 10 in the near future.

The XOS Honeybee here is a lot similar to XOS Hummingbird on previous Infinix devices. It is a very colourful user interface that we have gotten accustomed to. The signature app bundles of XOS like X themes, XShare and freezer are on board, adding up to the experience. If you are coming from a stock Android or Android One phone, you will find that the Hot 7 contains bloatware.

Needless to say, basic functionality is well covered on the Hot 7. Typing out text messages and chatting on social instant messengers on this large display is also a pleasure and you quickly get used to churning away lols, lmaos, rofls, and other emotionally-infused communiques and replies to your friends. It comes with Touchpal as the default keyboard but we changed this immediately to our favorite keyboard, Gboard.

Infinix Hot 7 review: Processor and Memory

The MT6580P chip clocked at 1.3 GHz delivers mostly smooth performance throughout. It will run even the latest games, maybe just not at maximum detail.

The Infinix Hot 7 is an affordable phone that does not feel underpowered at all. It runs on the quad-core MediaTek MT6580P system chip, a surprisingly capable piece of silicon that handles the Android daily grind with virtually no lag or slowdown.

We’re looking at four Cortex-A7-based cores running at up to 1.3GHz, along with a generous 2 GB of RAM (for the 32 GB unit we received). The chipset chip makes for a fairly speedy affordable phone.

With such a large bezel-less display, the Hot 7 is also a device that will certainly appeal to gamers. Good news is that it is capable of running the hottest games, including many heavier titles from the Google Play Store. However, this is not a device for hardcore gamers, check out these smartphones for hardcore gamers. Some games won’t run at maximum detail, but if you are not particularly picky about that, then the Hot 7 is for you.

Onboard storage is 32GB with 23GB available to the end user. However, memory expansion is supported, and you can pop in cards of up to 128 gigs.

Browsing the web and chatting looks good on such a large display, and the silicon muscle allows for mostly smooth usage. Scrolling around and switching between apps is a relatively smooth process, with only an occasional stutter.

Infinix Hot 7 review: Connectivity

One definite downside to the Infinix Hot 7 is that there’s no LTE support, so you’ll be relegated to 3G speeds when it comes to mobile data and downloads. On the plus side, there’s dual-SIM support for those who regularly need access to two different SIM-cards. Streaming videos is a good experience and downloads are pretty fast too at 21Mbps.

Neatly, the Hot 7 also comes with Wi-Fi, as well as the more traditional other connectivity options: Bluetooth and GPS, but there is no NFC.

Infinix Hot 7 review: Battery

The Infinix Hot 7 is powered by a non-removable 4000mAh battery which is hidden under a metallic plate seen when you remove the back cover. The Hot 7 battery life is fine but, likewise, is somewhat middling. In our review, we put the phone at full brightness and connected to a 4G network– the Hot 7 lasted 14hrs 07 mins. That’s not bad. It’s behind the Infinix Note 5, but not by much.

This translates to solid, all-day battery life with moderate use. We were able to record 6 days and 12 hours on moderate usage after a full charge and the phone still had 16% of juice available. Sadly, the Hot 7 doesn’t possess fast charging and it takes at least 2 hours to fully charge the battery.

Infinix Hot 7 review: Camera

The dual rear 13Mp + 8Mp main camera captures sharp images that look good in most conditions, but sometimes get colors wrong. 1080p video recording is also relatively sharp and smooth.

The Infinix Hot 7 features a vertically aligned dual 13Mp 5P AF lens and a secondary 8Mp 4P lens with a dual LED flash, as well as an 8Mp front-facing camera.

Camera interface

The main shooter captures 4:3, 16:9 and 18:9 images. The camera app starts quickly, revealing an interface typical for recent Infinix devices, with shooting modes like Beauty, Portrait, AI Cam, Video and Panorama. However, there are no manual settings including ISO and white balance adjustments.

Images captured on the main camera look fairly detailed and mostly good in terms of colors, but if we had to pick the nits, we’d say there were also a few instances where it miscalculated colors, shooting colder pictures that did not look that good. On the whole, though, the images captured on the Infinix Hot 2 are definitely above the average for this price class, looking sharp, vivid and generally noise-free. Indoors, in lower light scenarios, we are also pleased with the Hot 7 camera. It preserves colors close to their natural hues.

We should note that the focus is rather sluggish and may take a second to lock –which is a bit fine. Depending on the situation, it may take 2 or even 3 seconds, which feels rather slow. It is also rather tricky – when you press the shutter key, the Hot 7 will snap a photo no matter if the focus is locked or not. The white circle turn green when the camera lock focus. However, after taking a picture, there is a second lag before you can take another picture. This prevents you from snapping images extremely quickly.

Other camera settings

The camera also has an HDR shooting mode that would come in handy when you want more dynamics in an image (for example, when shooting an object against the sun or other very bright background), but capturing an HDR shot is a little slow and requires a steady hand.

The 8Mp front camera is a fairly good tool for your selfie addiction. As usual, Infinix included a beauty mode that will add an unnatural smoothening to your skin that will eventually hide any imperfections like wrinkles by blurring them. This makes for social media upload ready images with little or no edit needed.

Sample Images

The camera can also record video with up to 1080p resolution. Recorded footage looks pleasingly smooth and sharp, and there’s little to dislike about it. This little, however, includes the lack of continuous auto-focus (you have to manually tap to re-focus), and no optical image stabilization (OIS). Sound recording in videos is decent and on par with your average expectations, but does not stand out in any way.

Infinix Hot 7 review: Verdict

The Infinix Hot 7 doesn’t exactly blow us off our feet, with all of its hardware and features already present on plenty of other Infinix phones. The selfie and dual camera at the back do a really good job in well illuminated scenes. However, they are almost brought to shame when the lights go out. But we are glad Infinix offered a smartphone with sweet features at a low price tag. If you can’t quite afford the pricey Infinix Zero 6 but want a big-screen phone with recent software, this could be worth considering.

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