At the end of last year, Infinix expanded its “hot” lineup of smartphones with the new budget model, the Infinix HOT 40. The device boasts an interesting trendy design with large camera modules, decent internals with expandable RAM, a pleasant display with 90Hz refresh rate, wired reverse charging feature, and stereo speakers. Today, we’ll take a closer look at this newcomer and compare it with some competitors to find out if the HOT 40 will be a worthy choice for its price.
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Infinix HOT 40 specifications
- Display: IPS, 6.78″, FHD+ (1080×2460), 90Hz, 396 ppi, brightness up to 500 nits
- Processor: Helio G88, 8 cores, 6×Cortex-A55 (1.8 GHz) + 2×Cortex-A75 (2.0 GHz), 12nm
- Graphics Processor: Mali-G52 MC2
- Internal Storage: 256 GB
- RAM: 8 GB (+8 GB via Virtual RAM), LPDDR4x
- microSD Support: up to 1 TB
- Slot: Triple, 2 nanoSIM + microSD
- Wireless Networks: Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
- Main Camera: 50 MP (f/1.6, 2K video recording at 30 fps) + 0.08 MP depth sensor + 2 MP macro
- Front Camera: 32 MP (f/2.2), flash
- Battery: 5000 mAh, 33W charging capacity, support for reverse wired charging
- OS: Android 13 with XOS 13.5 skin
- Dimensions: 168.6×76.6×8.3 mm
- Weight: 196 g
- Colors: gold (Horizon Gold), green (Starfall Green), black (Starlit Black), blue (Palm Blue)
- Extras: DTS stereo sound
Price
The HOT lineup from Infinix offers budget devices that combine decent hardware, relevant functionality, vibrant design, and very appealing price tags. For instance, the new Infinix HOT 40 in the 8/256 GB configuration can be purchased for an average of $160 today. A good deal, isn’t it? But what does the “fortieth” model offer for its money? Let’s take a look at its specifications and performance in real-life scenarios.
Package contents
The HOT 40 arrived for review in its signature purple-green box, still wrapped in plastic. Inside, there was a complete set: the smartphone with factory film, a standard silicone bumper, a charging cable, and a 33W charger, a SIM card tray ejector tool, and, of course, accompanying documentation.
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Design, materials and arrangement of elements
The Infinix HOT 40 looks modern, neat, and vibrant. In the Palm Blue color, which we have for review, it simply can’t go unnoticed.
Looking at it, it appears to be a matte blue plastic with a slightly textured finish. However, at certain angles, the back intelligently shimmers with gold and rich pink towards the bottom. It looks very intriguing.
And overall, the device is available in three other colors besides Palm Blue: Horizon Gold, Starfall Green, and Starlit Black.
One thing that’s hard to miss here is the camera block. It’s made to be massive and slightly raised above the body. Unlike the matte texture of the back, it has a glossy, mirror-like finish. There are three camera modules, each with large frames. In the top right corner of the block, you can see a small ring – that’s how they implemented the flash (which also doubles as a flashlight), consisting of 4 LEDs. It shines quite brightly, by the way. Below it are the camera specifications.
If you look closely, on the left side at the back, you can see a barely noticeable brand logo. It’s simply outlined in gloss on the matte surface, so you can only see it from a certain angle. Personally, I prefer this much more than a flashy logo covering half the body.
At the front, we are greeted by a large screen. The bezels around the display are small, uniform on three sides, but the bottom one is slightly wider than the others. At the junction of the top edge and the screen, there is a barely noticeable grille of the earpiece.
By the way, to the right of it, there is a full-fledged dual flash for the selfie camera, but it’s virtually impossible to notice it until it lights up. The front camera itself is placed in the punch-hole cutout on the screen, centered below the earpiece.
In contrast to the matte body, the edges are adorned with glossy blue with a metallic effect. By the way, the borders around each camera module and the entire block have the same texture. The coating is quite dense and smooth, and feels very pleasant in the hands.
On the left side, there is a full-fledged slot for two SIM cards and a microSD card.
On the right side, there’s a volume rocker with a fairly springy feel and the power button, combined with the fingerprint scanner.
At the bottom, you can see the grille of the main speaker, the 3.5mm headphone jack, and the Type-C port, as well as the opening for the microphone. At the top, there’s only a small grille for the secondary speaker.
The Infinix HOT 40 feels like a rather pleasant device. It boasts a charming design and attractive color, using nice materials and textures. As for the really large camera module, it’s a subjective matter. Some may find it bothersome, some may like it, and others may simply not pay much attention to it. Personally, I’m not a fan of oversized modules, but it didn’t affect my impression of the smartphone. I liked it.
Infinix HOT 40 ergonomics
What can be said about the ergonomics of the HOT 40? It fully corresponds to devices with a screen diagonal of 6.78 inches. The smartphone feels comfortable in the hand, but sometimes it can feel a bit slippery due to the glossy surface of the edges. So it’s good that they are flat rather than curved. However, this can easily be mitigated by using any case.
Anyway, using it with one hand for full functionality is out of the question. If needed, the one-handed mode comes in handy. The placement of the power button, which houses the fingerprint scanner, is very convenient – practically in the middle. So you don’t need to stretch to unlock it – it falls right under your thumb while holding the smartphone in your hand. Otherwise, everything else here is just like in any smartphone with a large screen.
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Display
The Infinix HOT 40 features a 6.78-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1080×2460, 396 ppi, and a brightness of up to 500 nits, with a refresh rate of up to 90 Hz. Why “up to”? Because it offers three display modes – 60 Hz, 90 Hz, and an adaptive mode that automatically adjusts the refresh rate depending on the content type. It reduces it where it won’t affect the perception of information and increases it for multimedia entertainment and other usage scenarios. This, in turn, allows for more efficient battery usage.
The screen performs excellently in everyday use, offering pleasant and natural color reproduction, good contrast, ample brightness, and wide viewing angles. It handles both text and graphics exceptionally well, whether it’s reading text, watching videos, playing games, or scrolling through Instagram. While there’s only one color mode available, the settings offer a dark theme, color temperature adjustment, eye protection mode, adaptive brightness, and numerous customization options for the interface and home screen.
Performance and wireless connectivity
The smartphone is powered by an 8-core Helio G88 chipset built on a 12nm process. Among the eight cores, six are energy-efficient Cortex-A55 clocked up to 1.8 GHz, while the remaining pair are Cortex-A75 cores clocked up to 2.0 GHz. Graphics processing is handled by the Mali-G52 MC2 GPU. In terms of memory, it offers 256 GB of internal storage with microSD expandability up to 1 TB, along with 8 GB of RAM expandable (virtually) by an additional 8 GB. It supports essential wireless networks such as Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, and location services (GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS).
Despite its relatively simple processor, the Infinix HOT 40 operates smoothly and responsively. It handles everyday tasks, multitasking, entertainment, and games well. Of course, don’t expect impressive FPS in demanding modern games, but you can try them at lower graphics settings. The smartphone performs well with casual and other less demanding applications. You can check out the results of some tests here.
Infinix HOT 40 software
The operating system here is Android 13 with the proprietary XOS 13.5 interface. It’s a fairly pleasant, user-friendly interface with extensive customization options, offering both basic functionality and additional features. Among the latter, there are several notable ones worth mentioning.
Yes, there’s the Folax voice assistant, a floating assistant for quick access to the most popular apps, the XArena gaming space, which offers numerous settings for optimizing the gaming experience, the WeZone app for finding multiplayer gaming partners, an online gaming portal called AHA Games, the Carlcare online service center, and the Magic Ring panel for displaying certain system information. Currently, it can show a fairly limited set of data, such as animation during face recognition, during calls, charging, as well as reminders for low battery levels and when to disconnect the charger (when reaching 100%). Perhaps in the future, it will be updated and its functionality expanded, but for now, that’s how it stands.
There’s also a stack of pre-installed apps on the smartphone, most of which can be quickly removed. Here you’ll find an additional app store for apps and games similar to the Play Market, and a social network called XClub (somewhat like a local TikTok with short videos and subscriptions), but there are also useful things like My Health for improving physical fitness and tracking health status.
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Unlocking methods
Here it’s all by the book: there’s a side-mounted fingerprint sensor and a face scanner. Both work flawlessly. The first one just needs a light touch, and the second one manages to unlock even in complete darkness with low screen brightness (and no “flashlight” on the face, as sometimes happens with some smartphones). Beautiful. 10 out of 10.
Sound
The sound in the Infinix HOT 40 is stereo with DTS support, provided by two speakers – bottom and top. Thanks to the use of a separate additional radiator, rather than the earpiece, as seen in many budget smartphones, the sound is better balanced and there’s practically no bias towards the bottom speaker (especially in landscape orientation). However, it’s rather flat on its own. Despite being stereo, the sound lacks depth due to minimal presence of low frequencies. Overall, for a budget device, the sound is quite pleasant – suitable for videos, games, social media, or video calls. But for music, it falls short. Headphones or Bluetooth speakers come in handy for that.
Infinix HOT 40 cameras
The rear camera on the smartphone is a triple setup – featuring a primary 50 MP module with an f/1.6 aperture, 2x zoom, and the ability to shoot 2K video at 30 fps, along with an auxiliary 0.08 MP depth sensor and a 2 MP macro lens.
The native camera app offers a wide range of tools for photography, filming, and creativity:
- For photography, there are modes such as “Photo,” “Macro,” “Super Night,” “Beauty,” “Portrait,” “Pro,” “Panorama,” “Document,” and “AR Mode”
- For videos, there are options like “Video,” “Film” with numerous effects, “Slow Motion,” “Slow-mo,” and “Short Video.”
And besides the main functions, there are also filters, beauty enhancement parameters, and Google Lens.
How are the shots on the Infinix HOT 40? There’s no revolution here; it’s pretty much like most budget smartphones. I like the shots in good natural lighting—they’re clear, detailed, and the colors and textures are well represented. For the “point and shoot” format, it’s very good.
But in artificial or low lighting, detail, clarity, and color rendition are lost. The shots appear dimmer, blurred, and less contrasted than in daylight. To improve the situation a bit, the night shooting mode can help. Photos won’t be perfect, but due to increased sharpness, they become more interesting. Shall we look at some examples? As always, on the left column, I’ll show shots taken in standard shooting mode in low light conditions, and on the right, shots in night mode:
And a few more shots under different lighting conditions of the main module and the basic mode.
FULL RESOLUTION PHOTO ON INFINIX HOT 40
Exactly, when using the two-times zoom, you can achieve a good and clear picture in good lighting conditions and an average one in insufficient lighting.
FULL RESOLUTION PHOTO WITH 2X ZOOM ON THE INFINIX HOT 40
Regarding the macro module, with its help, you can capture fine details and textures, but it requires good lighting, preferably natural. You probably won’t use it too often, but it’s there, it does something, so it’s not bad. Here are a few examples.
MACRO PHOTOS ON INFINIX HOT 40 IN FULL RESOLUTION
The selfie camera has been equipped with a 32 MP module with an aperture of f/2.2. Additionally, it has been equipped with a flash located to the right of the earpiece. By the way, you can add light for photos in low light conditions in two ways: by turning on the full flash (which is very bright) or by selecting the screen fill mode with white color for softer illumination. Of note, there is a “Wide Selfie” mode here, which works on the same principle as “Panorama”. To capture everyone in the frame, simply move the camera from side to side. It may be useful for someone. Overall, the camera takes decent shots in sufficient lighting, but the quality significantly decreases in artificial light. The flash and screen illumination slightly improve the images, but of course, they don’t save them 100%.
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Battery life
The Infinix HOT 40 comes with a 5000 mAh battery, and they haven’t forgotten about fast charging either, with a power of 33 W. A full power adapter is included. The manufacturer assures that the smartphone can last up to 30 hours of video streaming and up to 9 hours of gaming. The latter is quite believable, as PCMark showed almost 11.5 hours of autonomous operation with 50% brightness. Quite impressive.
And there’s also support for reverse wired charging, turning the HOT 40 into a power bank of sorts, along with numerous power-saving settings that can increase autonomy by almost three times. Even if there’s only 5% charge left, the manufacturer claims that using Ultra Power Saving mode will stretch it to 2 hours of talk time or a day in standby mode.
Conclusions and competitors of the Infinix HOT 40
With a highly competitive price tag, the Infinix HOT 40 looks like a pretty good deal for the money. It boasts an attractive design, materials, and a variety of color options, a good and comprehensive package, a great 90Hz display, a pleasant interface with plenty of features, decent performance, good cameras for daytime shooting, stereo sound, solid battery life, and the ability to use the smartphone as a power bank. Can one really complain about a budget device for its average night shooting quality or the absence of a “wow” effect when listening to music? The answer lies in the question itself. So, for its $160 price tag, the Infinix HOT 40 is a highly competitive and functional solution.
By the way, about competitors. What models can be considered as alternatives to the HOT 40? For example, the Motorola Moto G24 Power. At a similar price point, the device offers a larger battery (6000 mAh), “clean” Android 14, and slightly fresher hardware. However, it has an HD+ resolution display, and it lacks NFC.
The Redmi 13C can also be considered as a competitor to the Infinix HOT 40. It features a slightly more powerful chipset and optical stabilization in the main camera module, but it has a lower charging power, lacks stereo sound, and has an HD+ screen.
There’s also the Tecno Spark 20, which was released around the same time as the HOT 40. In terms of hardware, cameras, and battery life, they are quite comparable. However, the Spark 20 features IP53 dust and water resistance. At the moment, it comes with an HD+ display, a hybrid SIM slot, lower charging power, and lacks NFC.
Anyway, in budget devices, sacrifices will always have to be made. And such a wide assortment allows you to choose what exactly to sacrifice. As we can see, despite the presence of quite decent options, the Infinix HOT 40 looks like a pretty good purchase that won’t disappoint those looking for a current, convenient, and affordable smartphone for all occasions. So, returning to the main question of the review, whether the HOT smartphone is indeed hot, the answer can be affirmative.
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