Infinix Mobility launched the Hot 7 in Uganda on 4th March and this immediately caught our attention especially given the low price that is mostly associated with another Transsion Holdings brand, Itel. After getting my hands on the device, here’s how I’ll describe my initial experience. Infinix Hot 7 features a tall display like many smartphones. However, I didn’t have trouble operating with one hand because the bezels are kept small. The panel seems to be quite narrower, but that’s the thing with the new breed of smartphones we’ve come across of late. That said, thanks to slim bezels on three of its sides and a notch at the top of the screen, the phone can be held in one hand easily. I could access reach the corners of the panel easily with little or no hand adjustments. Talking about the display, the Infinix Hot 7 sports a 6.2-inch full view panel with HD resolution and an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 to house the notch. Just like previous Hot 6X from the brand, the cut-out isn’t distracting per se and you can, of course, disable it if you wish to do so. Quality-wise, I found the screen to offer pleasing colours and good viewing angles. The Hot 7 offers a standard set of buttons and ports, and hasn’t skimped upon the 3.5mm audio jack, unlike most flagships from most brands. At the back, the dual cameras and dual LED flash are aligned in a vertical orientation. Sadly though, the shooters protrude from the phone’s surface slightly. The fingerprint is also located mid-back in and I didn’t find my finger mistakenly touching the camera when unlocking. Running the show on the Hot 7 is the MT6580 chipset. This is the same processor that powered the Infinix Hot 5 and many other affordable smartphones. However, it still offers a good balance between performance and power efficiency. Not that you’ll need to worry about the phone running out of juice quickly, though, since the device ships with a powerful 4,000mAh battery, which miserably doesn’t support fast charging. As far as memory is concerned, the smartphone comes with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of ROM. You can also top up the storage by slotting in a microSD card of up to 128GB. Just like the Infinix Hot 6 Pro, the Infinix Hot 7 features dual cameras at the back. However, the pixel count has been bumped up from what the Hot 6 Pro had – both for the front and back cameras. The rear camera setup includes a 13MP shooter, which is paired with an 8MP depth sensor. For selfies, the phone flaunts a capable 8MP snapper. The camera interface offers beauty mode, portrait mode, and AI Cam among other modes. In terms of software, the Hot 7 runs the proprietary XOS 4.1.0 Honeybee skin atop Android 8.1 Oreo. The UI is laden with features, and the phone comes with a slew of preloaded apps such as Xshare, Facebook, WhatsApp, along with trial versions of a bunch of games. The Infinix Hot 7 has already gone up for sale in Uganda at a price equivalent to UGX 439,000. Check out the Infinix review for a deep dive into the specs to help you decide if this is your next purchase.
