Infinix Hot 11 2022 review: a decent device for budget buyers

Here is our full review of the Infinix Hot 11 2022

• By Ashish Kumar
Published On: 10 May 2022 | 14:10 IST Last Updated On: 20 May 2022 | 15:25 IST

Infinix has been trying to make a difference in the online smartphone market of India, which is dominated by the likes of Xiaomi, Realme, and lately, Motorola phones. Infinix launches its phones in the Hot, Note, Zero, and Smart-series lineups to take on its rivals. Today, we have with us the Infinix Hot 11 2022, which targets budget buyers in the country. The handset is the successor to last year’s Infinix Hot 11. Here’s what we make of the all-new Infinix Hot 11 2022 after using it for almost a week.

Verdict

Infinix Hot 11 2022 is a budget smartphone which suits those with a tight budget or those moving from a feature phone to a smartphone. It offers reasonably good performance and battery life for its price, though the cameras leave a little something to be desired. The full HD display is one of its highlights. The handset can also be your secondary device as long as you won’t stress it with too much gaming and multi-tasking.

The lowdown

• As with many other budget smartphones, Infinix Hot 11 2022 also sports a plastic unibody design, with a glassy finish at the back. This looks cool and stylish, but adds to the slipperiness of the phone. That said, the handset has flat edges for a comfortable grip. The Infinix Hot 11 2022’s back is also a fingerprint magnet, which you can avoid by using a case like the one that the company ships in the box. The smartphone sports a squarish camera module, which doesn’t protrude from the body. Thanks to that, the device doesn’t wobble when lying flat on a surface. There is a dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack on the top edge of the phone (you will have to buy your own earphones) and a USB Type-C port and a speaker grille at the bottom. The power button and volume rocker are placed on the right spine.
• Up front, the Infinix Hot 11 2022 comes with a punch-hole display that bears a standard 60Hz refresh rate but offers full HD+ resolution. It’s a 6.67-inch LCD panel, with a Panda King glass layer protection on top, 550 nits of brightness, and an 89.5 percent screen-to-body ratio. The display is decent enough to offer accurate colours and respectable viewing angles. I had no issues using the device in sunny conditions as well. That said, the smartphone is WideVine L3 certified, which means no HD streaming via OTT platforms such as Netflix, Hotstar, and others. The Infinix Hot 11 2022 only plays content at 480p resolution.

• The Infinix Hot 11 2022 is not the most powerful smartphone in the segment, but it’s not a slouch either. The handset rocks a UniSoC T610 chipset under the hood, which was able to run basic apps such as messaging and calling just fine, but stuttered with apps like BGMI during my usage. There were some noticeable lags on the phone while running BGMI with Balanced graphics settings and a Medium frame rate. The handset is available in just one variant: 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. The storage is further expandable up to 1TB in lieu of the secondary SIM card.

• Coming to the cameras, the Infinix Hot 11 2022 sports a dual setup at the back, with a 13MP primary lens and a 2MP depth sensor. Daylight shots from these cameras look good but lack details if you zoom in. In slightly challenging lighting conditions or low light, the cameras just falter. The images come out grainy, with a lot of noise, and no highlights. Even the HDR doesn’t help much. The same can be said for the 8MP front camera. The cameras are packed with features like Pro mode, Slow motion, 1080p video recording, time-lapse, panorama mode, and more. There is a dedicated portrait mode for both back and selfie cameras, which doesn’t offer accurate results but gets the job done.

• The Infinix smartphone is driven by a 5,000mAh battery that lasted a full day for me on moderate usage. PCMark’s Battery test returned a score of 11 hours 16 minutes, which is decent for a device of this calibre. The Hot 11 2022 only comes with a 10W charging solution, which took its own sweet time to juice up the device. Software-wise, the handset runs Android 11-based XOS out of the box. The custom skin XOS is intuitive and all, but comes with ads and apps, which you can’t uninstall.

• The phone has a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, which more often than not would fail to register my touch. I can’t remember how many times I had to feed in the pin to unlock the device. The bottom-firing speaker is average, and the 4G LTE mobile network speed on Jio’s Faridabad circle was up to the expected standards.

Final Verdict

The Infinix Hot 11 2022 is a downgraded version of its predecessor, the regular Infinix Hot 11. The handset comes with a UniSoC T610 chipset instead of MediaTek Helio G70 SoC and a slightly smaller battery than the Hot 11. That said, Infinix has priced the phone the same as last year, i.e. Rs 8,999, which makes it slightly difficult to recommend.

The Infinix Hot 11 2022 competes against the Realme C31, which offers a macro lens in addition to the primary and portrait lens at the back, and Redmi 10A, which is a slightly more affordable option and has a chipset with a higher CPU clock speed than the UniSoC T610. However, both these phones miss out on an FHD+ resolution display. If that’s something that appeals to you, Infinix Hot 11 2022 has got you covered.

Editor’s rating: 3 / 5

Pros

• FHD+ screen
• Decent battery life
• Good design

Cons

• Cameras needs improvement
• No fast charging
• Performance could have been better