The Infinix Hot 9 Play is the latest device from the smartphone company and they really bumped up the features making the device a worthy upgrade from its predecessor, the Infinix Hot 8.
The Infinix Hot 9 Play manages to get the basic features right – at least for a phone at this budget space. The Infinix Hot 9 Play makes for an interesting player at this price point.
Design
The Infinix Hot 9 is quite a hefty phone – it’s large and heavy. It packs a 6.82-inch display and a 6000mAh battery.
The frame is plastic but with a solid feeling. The polycarbonate back makes the phone just a little bit more durable but the glossy coating is definitely a fingerprint magnet.
The design is plain but gets the job done. It’s worth noting that unexciting isn’t inherently bad.
It’s hard to handle the phone on one hand but for those who love large displays, you’ll love playing with this phone. Also, there’s a one-handed mode to make it easier to use the phone.
The display is a 720p panel and serviceable with enough brightness outside. There’s a waterdrop notch for the selfie camera. This design is still last year now that punch-hole cameras are a trend but I don’t hate it here.
There’s a rear fingerprint sensor – it’s accurate but slow at times, though not enough to be a frustration.
You get power and volume keys on the right side. They’ve been well-positioned allowing for easier access.
There’s also a microSD card and dual Sim slot on the left side, a micro-USB port and a headphone jack for charging at the bottom.
There’s a speaker grill but the earpiece in the top bezel that functions just as well – since its front-facing. Watching or streaming multimedia content will be a breeze in addition to the large display.
The back curves well to fit the hand and combined with the relatively thin bezels make it easy to use the phone.
Software, performance and battery
The Infinix Hot 9 Play comes with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. You get Android 10(Go Edition) and XOS 6.1. The Infinix Hot 9 comes with Android Go apps and bloatware apps which you can delete or disable. The software experience is mostly fine if you aren’t nitpicky and will probably be fine for most people.
You get the various perks of Android 10 such as the revamped gesture navigation and system-wide dark mode.
The MediaTek Helio A25 processor is a nice upgrade for the Hot series and was perfectly adequate. The overall experience never felt slow – although you’ll experience some lag in between gameplay and when switching demanding apps.
I was pretty pleased with the experience and most people will. So if you’re looking for a budget phone with reliable performance, then the Infinix Hot 9 Play will be a great choice.
Infinix bumped up the battery capacity of its new Hot phone and just like in my review of the Hot 8, battery life was great. The phone could go up to two days on a single charge reaching over 8 hours of screen-on time.
With a battery this huge, you won’t need to care about checking that battery percentage anymore.
The con of having this giant battery is that it takes a while to juice up, an hour from empty to 40%, another hour to 80% and 90 minutes to be completely full.
Expect excellent battery life just like its predecessor, you get solid over 7 hours of screen time per charge.
Since we’re all staying at home, it’s hard to get a feel for how the battery would endure in the real world but most days I would end up with averagely 30% before I got tucked in bed.
Cameras
The primary cameras are pretty decent – you get nice shots especially in good lighting conditions for sharing on social media. The selfies turn out well too. Sometimes the background blur fails with edge detection – a little patience will be needed to get a nice shot.
Here are some samples | Click on the photos to expand.
Selfies and Portraits
Regular shots with their Bokeh shots
More shots
Pricing and Availability
The Infinix Hot 9 Play is available on XPark for Ksh 13,299, Jumia for Ksh 13,499 and in Infinix’s official retail stores.
Final thoughts
Infinix really managed to bring upgrades to the Hot 9 Play which come in handy to improve the overall performance of the phone. The new chip is not a speed demon but it’s relatively faster than the processors found in budget devices in the same segment.
For a phone at this price, the cameras take surprisingly good photos, the huge display, the battery performance is great and these solid offerings make the phone worth considering.
