Infinix was able to strike deep into the smartphone market of Pakistan with the release of its Hot Note, and now, the company plans on emulating the same with its Hot 2, that is going to retail in Pakistan for Rs. 9,999 for 1GB version and Rs. 11,399 for 2GB variant. Phone is going to be available on Daraz (currently out of stock due to Black Friday sales).
Can the Hot 2 deliver the same amount of kick that the company’s previous products have delivered? We will find out in our Infinix Hot 2 review.
While the front side of the smartphone might look like a generic Android smartphone, the rear side tells another story. Infinix Hot 2 uses a dual-color combination, with the back side possessing a white plastic cover with several holes punctured in it, and of course, the company’s logo prominently engraved at the rear side. It’s aesthetically pleasing to say the least. Now, here is the most interesting part; Infinix Hot 2 may have purposely done this since we found that gripping the smartphone was much simpler thanks to the existence of these tiny punctured holes. They add more appeal and texture to the device, which is a definite bonus in our books.
The Back Side
The screen is surrounded by a fair amount of bezels. Those of you with slightly larger hands will find that the device feels a wee bit thinner that what you actually expected. This is not necessarily a bad thing since after using it for a couple of hours, you will easily get used to it.
The Front Side
Aesthetics is not the only factor that is required to purchase a smartphone, of course, which brings us to the next part.
Chinese manufacturers have this habit of placing all buttons on one side and this is exactly what they have done with Infinix Hot 2. Now, it is not necessarily a bad thing but when one wants to take a screenshot, things become a bit harder. For lefties, it won’t be a problem to take a screenshot, and therein lies the issue with the button placement.
The Volume and Power Buttons
As for the internals, we were very pleased to see that the battery is removable, which will definitely help when you are in the market looking for a replacement.
Removable Battery
As you can see, there are two large SIM card slots present, along with a microSD card slot present on the left. While this is a very flexible setup for those who want expandable storage up to 32GB, and want to carry two numbers without actually carrying two cell phones, the only one complaint that we found that every time you need to replace the SIM or storage card (for whatever reason), you will be required to remove the battery first. While having a total of three slots is definitely a great thing to see, it would have been even better had there been a way to attach all three cards without the cumbersome removal process involved.
The Dual Sim, MicroSD Slots, and Battery
There are three tiny speak cutouts present at the bottom, which is a decent setup, seeing as how it is a mid-ranged smartphone, and there is a combination of a charging port and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The Speaker Grill
Personally, we prefer this setup because when you want to use your smartphone and charge it at the same time, having a charging port at the top greatly reduces the need for a longer cable, so you can comfortably use the device and charge it at the same time, without fearing that you will yank out the cable.
Headphone Jack and USB Charging Ports
On a side note, we were hoping to see a Type-C USB port, instead of a microUSB one, since the benefits of Type-C USB exceed its drawbacks (they are expensive to place in smartphones and their accessories are expensive as well). However, it will take a very long while for such a port to be adopted into smartphones, so it is not a big deal at all.
The display of Infinix Hot 2 is extremely sharp, indicating that it is an IPS type display and we will tell you why. First off, the display is brighter than most and when we change its viewing angles by tilting the smartphone, there is no color distortion, which is the obvious benefit. IPS panels have their fair share of advantages, which include being able to produce sharper images compared to Super AMOLED type displays (pixels of IPS panels are packed more closely, which is why this happens) found in Samsung devices. However, they do not possess the energy efficiency of Super AMOLED displays, but they are much cheaper than the latter, which explains why the Infinix Hot 2 carries an affordable price.
The Display Screen
The resolution of the smartphone is 1280 x 720 pixels, and on an IPS type display, it looks even better thanks to its sharper attributes. If you are complaining why Infinix Hot 2 does not have a resolution of 1080p, it’s actually a good thing. 1080p displays are normally found in high-end phones and if it was present on this handset, its price would have to be increased, along with its specifications, making it a higher-priced package than the current one. Side by side, if the specifications remained the same and resolution was increased, performance and battery would also take a major hit.
Since it is merged with an IPS panel, you will see a very, very small difference when comparing it to a 1080p display, and that too if you have a keen eye for such things.
For its price, Infinix Hot 2 has all the necessary features to fulfill your requirements, but is its interface experience full of unneeded extras? Looks like that isn’t the case after all. The very first thing that we noticed about the smartphone when browsing the installed apps section; no bloatware. Some pre-installed apps were present which were (thankfully) removable. Best of all, we could do this without having to root the smartphone.
Some Pre-Installed Apps that can be easily Removed
Infinix Hot 2 is running Android Lollipop 5.1, which begs the question; are we going to see a Marshmallow update for the smartphone in the future? Let us hope so. As far as interface performance is concerned, everything was snappy fast; apps did not struggle to open even after we quick fired several of them (this is where the presence of 2GB RAM really shined). Sure we did run into some performance issues while playing really intensive mobile games, but after all, that was expected. If you are engaged with simple mobile apps, then everything will work smooth as butter.
One thing we might add here is that there’s no capacitive buttons present on the bezels part of the screen. Instead, they are present on the screen itself, much like the Nexus lineup, which makes things much easier, particularly since they are quick to respond when being tapped upon and do not interfere when you are playing games.
Without going into too much detail, here are some benchmarks that we managed to run in order to give you a fair idea of how the smartphone performs in comparison to other devices.
AnTuTu
GeekBench
Vellamo
Here are some camera samples that we managed to take with both the rear and front sensors of Infinix Hot 2. While these are just samples, they will give you an idea on the overall image quality of both cameras.
(Click to Enlarge)
For most of you out there, high amount of battery life is a very crucial feature to have in a smartphone. In Infinix Hot 2, its 2,200mAh might not seem like much, but we decided to take it for a test anyway. In order to test out the smartphone, we set its screen brightness to 100 percent and performed mildly intensive tasks such as light web browsing. In this way, you will be able to experience the same scenario that mobile users face.
Given below are the results that were obtained:
Battery Stats
We have to say that we were quite impressed with the overall results, particularly with the standby time. 3G connectivity sucks the living daylights out of a smartphone’s battery and while we were hoping to get more juice out of the device, raking out 7 hours while connected is not bad at all.
Infinix Hot 2 is a great Android powered handset, especially if you are on a strict budget. There are several features that make it feel that a premium quality smartphone and we would like to point out those features right now. Additionally, we will also point out what we felt could have been added to Infinix Hot 2 in order to make it even better than before. Hopefully, the company will be reading this so that they will be able to release an even better device in the future.
Smart Gestures
After looking at each and every aspect of the Hot 2, we have summarized the following scores below:
There is no denying the fact that Infinix Hot 2 is an amazing smartphone when it comes to price and performance. When we first laid our eyes on the specifications, we were slightly worried about its interface performance, but as it turns out, seeing is believing. Naturally, when performing intensive tasks such as playing graphically intensive mobile games will cause performance issues in isolated cases, but for a Rs. 11,399 handset (2GB RAM version), the Hot 2 has greatly impressed us with what it delivers.
The Contents of the Box
If you want higher performance, then we strongly recommend that you purchase the 2GB RAM model since you will get a much higher bigger performance boost for an additional Rs. 1,400.
