Infinix recently launched its new budget offering in India called the Infinix S4. It’s a relatively new brand trying to make its dent in the sea of Chinese manufacturers dominating the scale of the Indian market. With the S4 the company hopes to break the barrier of a great smartphone that comes with a triple camera setup available under a stipulated price point. The company is selling the 3GB+32GB variant for a starting price of just Rs. 8,999 available only across Flipkart portal.
The talking points include a large 4000mAh battery, 32 MP AI front camera and of course the triple camera setup on the rear. So can it wow the audience or just be a yet another name to enter the Indian market. Well, let’s find out!
Design and Display
The design language the S4 follows closely resembles any pick out of the market contenders with its sleek and glossy body finish. The Nebula Finish does make the colour pop out right off the back with not so much as to overpower the overall look in any way.
The rear includes the triple camera setup placed beside a quad-LED flashlight and a rectangular shaped fingerprint sensor in a simple and elegant manner. The front gets you a massive 6.26-inch HD+ Notched display (20 x 1520) pixels resolution with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio that pumps out 500nit screen brightness. The viewing angles are decent and not something we might rely on for outdoor visibility as the possibility seems bleak at best. The built quality looks satisfactory as the device is quite lightweight at 155 grams and does fit in hand ergonomically.
Just a word of caution might be the highly glossy back being home to a lot of smudges and fingerprints so try and use the TPU case in the box. Overall there is nothing out-of-the-box in terms of the design as it looks quite predictable considering the company wishes to play it safe.
Hardware and Software
Coming to the internals the Infinix S4 packs a decent spec for the price as it comes with an Octa-Core 2.0GHz, MediaTek Helio P22 chipset coupled with a PowerVR GE8320 GPU on the inside. It is backed up by a 3GB of RAM plus 32GB of internal memory, that can be further expanded up to 256GB via micro SD card slot.
I won’t get your hopes up too high as this chipset is a mediocre performer that does suffer a lot in terms of the raw performance it is deemed to deliver. Overall usage in terms of day to day basic tasks and multitasking were adequately handled by the chipset. Gaming performance is average, but still, you can play a game like PUBG on lowest graphics. But this begs the question which phone at this price point does deliver the performance observed in the flagship two to three times the cost. Nonetheless, the Octa-core chipset handles all the tasks with ease and we weren’t left asking for more.
As for the sensor unlock speed goes the response rate was quite good and the lag was barely noticeable. Users also have an option to take calls, click photos and browse through pictures using the gestures on the fingerprint sensor. It also supports a face unlock that we found to be surprisingly fast and accurate for 8 out of 10 times.
Coming to the software the Infinix S4 runs a modified version of its custom UI XOS 5.0 on top of Android 9.0 Pie. This includes some hefty amount of bloatware that users can opt to uninstall with the exception being the company-owned apps like XTheme, XClub, Phone Master that cannot be deleted.
Besides all this, the phone supports a lot of neat looking gestures such as a three-finger swipe to capture screenshots, flip the phone to mute incoming calls and a double-tap to wake the screen.
Camera
Coming to the device USP its triple camera setup of primary 13-megapixel snapper with f/1.8 aperture, an 8-megapixel 120 degrees ultra-wide camera with f/2.2 aperture, and a 2-megapixel camera makes up for a good overall package. The rear comes with a 32-megapixel selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture and screen flash.
The image quality was quite good under sufficient sunlight and ambient lighting conditions. The triple camera setup managed to get us some great looking shots that had the level of clarity and colour reproduction we were hoping to acquire. The low-light camera performance felt a bit flimsy as the images came out to be noisy and grainy as the objects weren’t recognisable. The AI working to make the images better seems evident as the images took some time to process. The camera UI also looks pragmatic with its simple design and variety of modes like video, AI cam, beauty, bokeh, and AR shot.
The front camera too does a decent enough job for the price, as it captured some good looking selfies. The images had a fair amount of detail and saturation which fared well for Instagram use. It too suffered from low lighting conditions as it lacked the sharpness and depth we were looking to get. In all the camera were a bit understated and might improve with subsequent upgrades and iterations over time.
Battery and Connectivity
The Infinix S4 supports a 4000mAh battery which lasted us a full day worth of average usage. This included scouring through our social media pages, email checking, watching Netflix and web surfing. However, the absence of fast charging makes it take more than 3 hours to fully stock the battery up to 100%.
Connectivity options include a dual 4G Volte, Wi-Fi, GPS/AGPS, Bluetooth 5.0, 3.5 mm audio jack, FM radio, and micro USB port.
Gizmo Verdict
The Infinix S4 is one good option from the company, the level of build quality, camera performance and battery life it delivers is surprising from a name this is totally new. From what we see the S4 ticks all the right boxes and we could sure expect something in the near future as the device looks promising. As far as the everyday use goes, this phone delivers on all fronts and does exceptionally well in some segments. We strongly urge you to consider this device for this budget price and gives a tough fight to the likes of Xiaomi Redmi and Realme series.
