About a month ago, Infinix Mobility hinted at the newest phone in their HOT series – the X554 Hot 3, on Twitter. Now? They have launched it officially, and sent in a review unit for us to play with.
Interesting piece of hardware they’ve got here. I think most of it looks good – oddly reminiscent of the chamfered edges on the Samsung Galaxy S6/S7. On the front end, there’s a 5.5-inch, 720P touchscreen with capacitive buttons, and on the rear end, a battery cover with diagonal stripes (which I think look great). Speaking of batteries, the Hot 3 came with a 3000 mAh juice pack – which is pretty average by today’s standards – which supports fast charging and OTG reverse charging. They said.
Infinix is promoting the phone with the tagline “selfie with soft flash makes life colorful”, so I’ll be paying lots of attention to the 2MP front camera. I expected nothing less than a 5MP shooter when I heard the tagline, but we all know that many megapixels, doth not a good camera make. The rear camera is 8MP with autofocus and an LED flash.
On the software side of things, the Hot 3 runs Android 5.1 Lollipop (which is pretty outdated, considering Android 6.0 has since been released and Android N, announced). Sadly, it’s not an Android One device like its predecessor, the X510 but hey. It’s not the end of the world.
I’m partial towards stock Android because 8 times out of 10, 3rd-party UI skins look fugly and end up slowing the phones down. Still? Infinix has described XUI as “slim, fast, (and) beautiful” so I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt. That is, until I spend enough time interacting with it.
Those are my first thoughts. Want to see what’s in the box? Watch my unboxing video below, and watch out for the full review in the coming days. Ciao.
