Transsion Holdings has been launching quite a few smartphones with impressive hardware at affordable prices under its Infinix brand in India. And now, the Hong Kong-based company has launched its latest smartphone, the Infinix Hot S3, in the country. The smartphone offers high-end specs like an 18:9 full view display, 20MP front-facing camera, and Android Oreo out of the box at an unbeatable price starting at just Rs 8,999.
The Infinix Hot S3 has been launched as an 'India First' smartphone and is aimed at the selfie-loving crowd. However, its USP lies in the fact that it is among the cheapest phones to ship with Android Oreo out-of-the-box and also the fact that it sports a 20MP front-facing camera. Another key highlight of the phone is that it packs a 4000mAh battery under the hood.
Apart from that, the Infinix Hot S3 is also the company's first smartphone to feature an 18:9 display. That said, it will be interesting to see how the most affordable 20MP selfie camera sporting smartphone stacks up against the more expensive selfie-centric smartphones like Vivo V7+ (Quick Review) and Oppo F5 (Review).
Specifications
The Infinix Hot S3 sports a 5.65-inch HD+ IPS display with a resolution of 720px1440 pixels and 2.5D curved glass protection on top. And although the phone is not completely bezel-less, it comes with a decent 81 percent screen-to-body ratio.
It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core chip along with Adreno 505 GPU, and comes in two storage configurations – 3GB RAM with 32GB storage and 4GB RAM with 64GB storage. Both variants support expandable storage via a microSD card (up to 128GB).
On the photography front, the Infinix smartphone features a 13MP rear camera with an f/2.0 aperture, 5P lens, and PDAF, along with dual LED Flash. The front-facing 20MP camera also comes with f/2.0 aperture, 5P lens and a dedicated selfie flash.
Connectivity options include, 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.2, USB OTG support and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The phone packs almost all the important sensors like ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, gyroscope and a rear mounted fingerprint sensor.
The Infinix Hot S3 runs XOS 3.0 based on Android Oreo and is backed by a 4000mAh battery that comes with xCharge fast charging support.
Price and availability
As far as the pricing is concerned, the 3GB RAM +32GB storage variant is priced at Rs 8,999, while the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage variant is available for Rs 10,999.
The handset will be available exclusively via Flipkart in Sandstone Black and Brush Gold colourways and will go on sale starting February 12.
Infinix Hot S3 vs Competition
The new Infinix Hot S3 will be up against the popular Honor 7X, Honor 9 Lite and Xiaomi Redmi Y1, among others.
