Infinix HOT 30 review – For the mass gamers with a friendly price tag.

Now phone always comes in a different level of specifications and therefore commands a different level of pricing, Infinix just recently reveal the HOT 30, which they dubbed as the budget phone price destroyer and we got a loan unit from Infinix just to find out what is packed underneath and why they claimed so.

Unboxing

The unboxing revealed the following which you can get inside the box

• The Infinix HOT 30 phone
• Translucent case
• Charger
• USB A to C cable
• SIM Ejector
• User Manual/User Guide/Warranty Statement

Design – Basic essentials, Good Looking

I will start from the back of the phone, it brings in the glossy style with some lines on the upper side near the camera area, where it does bring in the wavy lines racing looks and brings some shine under the sun, it does not scream loud saying that I am a gaming phone, but rather Infinix is trying to show a subtle, quieter design that shows some sturdiness and easy to hold overall glass front mix hard polycarbonate structure for a practical long usage with your hands and fingers.

Weighted at 196 grams and well equipped with a standard USB C port, side mounted fingerprint scanner and a rare 3.5mm headphone jack, I would say this is a well rounded amount of ports available and especially for most gamers out there, the headphone jack is mostly a welcome feature for a no latency plug in audio experience. There is still bezels around the outer screen area but that doesn’t bother me much, its an overall well nice looking phone for it’s price point and still a practical design.

Display & Audio – Somehow still delivers certain things on par

A 90Hz display on this price point, 6.78inch and pixel density near 400ppi, this is almost can be considered as on standard with most of the budget low to mid in between smartphones today, and Infinix of course got to cut some corners to make things sensible, no AMOLED there, what you get is an IPS LCD display that peaks brightness up to 600 nits the most. Now it is spectacular on the refresh rate but not over the display, however considering the brightness level, I am ok with that over testing areas surrounding normal room lighting and outdoors, it still performs admirably well with 270Hz touch sampling rate that makes it highly suitable for MOBA and FPS genres alike with a slight drawback, in some rare cases sometimes the framerate will just act down to 60Hz if you are over very heavy apps or web browsing, but it is still not too bad and the phone will still try to keep the frames up whenever it can.

Audio wise, the Infinix HOT 30 does have a stereo speaker setup, one as earpiece and another is bottom firing, both combined actually produced quite loud audio but slightly hollow on bass portion, but still with the inclusion of DTS sound, you still be able to tweak the audio mode and limited customisation on equalizer which in even some of the same tiered of phones did not provide such features.

Camera – Still impressive under its own way

Rear : 50MP(Hynix Hi5021Q,1/2.55” SENSOR, 6P lens, AF)+ AI Lens
Front : 8 MP, f/2.5, (wide)

All we know that the rear camera setup is a 50MP 6P wide angle lens plus one AI lens beside it, but the results came out quite surprising to me, at least adding the factor that this is a budget level gaming oriented phone that does not cost as much as others, and able to produce more than the expected results. Day time came out with a well color handling, with slight saturation but still be able to perceive out bright contrast images with identifiable objects, while at night the colors and the whole images processes out can be slightly washed out but in comparison with other similar priced phones, it does well on shadows and able to capture properly over lighted areas without much of a hassle that to certain point, you still can zoom over to take a look on further details. Selfie is business as usual for the day time shots, night time wise you have a built in LED light to assist in bright up your selfies should you need one, its there.

On the other hand, video recording can go max up to 2K resolution at 30 Frames, which is more than enough and really pushes the limit of the combined SOC and camera sensors, which in results you can a fairly OK only recording with quite a number of stutters and jitters unless if you are not moving too much, this is also due to the lack of OIS and EIS in the rear camera setup.

Performance, Benchmarks, Experience – Good for mobile esports, not so beyond

A dated MediaTek Helio G88 12nm process Octa Core processor is inside along with a healthy 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 128GB of internal storage is part of the heart in the Infinix HOT 30 to get most of your multitasking out. The G88 is known for powering most of the low mid tier models and supports high refresh rate on the display level together, this is also well blended in with most of the games available to push, and I mean most mobile eSports title such as Mobile Legends or CoD Mobile, FreeFire and such, it works fluidly and loads fast on each instances. What is beyond we talk about is much more intensive ones like Genshin Impact, where it starts to hold itself but you still be able to play with it, provided setting things to low and capping to 45FPS will get you buy even on normal domain multiplayer, which is still a good measure and expected to run OK on such phone.

The phone also blends in well with a modern Android 13 and Infinix own XOS 12.6 which is a slightly customized UI with more features packs in, such as themes, health app, QR scanner, file manager, Game Mode, Power Marathon along with a few bloatwares where you can just delete it if not needed.

Benchmarks shows a subpar results only but those are just benchmarks, I am more enjoying over towards the way how this phone can used throughout one whole day, and if you are just playing a few games, calls, messages, social media, some streaming here and there, expect this phone will last you 12 hours with ease over a 5000MaH battery capacity, and with the included 33W charger, recharging back only takes you like an hour or so to get you back on your next mobile game.

Technical Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion

The Infinix HOT 30 is a phone that tells you a budgeted devices can be a good one in certain angle, for less than USD200 phone you get the most of what one can think of as a rightly priced casual eSports mobile phone, a very usable rear camera setup for your picture shootings, fitting in a modern Android OS and expandable storage ready also. Most of the applications and games that you probably use daily will just run well, coupled with decent multimedia capabilities that is all ready to pick up, have fun and work on with what you need. With that said, if you are looking for a secondary device just for streaming, casual, gaming contents, this one works well for the most as well.

The Infinix HOT 30 is now available for an affordable price of RM599 and comes with Infinix local 1 year warranty. For more information, CLICK here to find out.