Infinix Hot 10T Review: Budget Done Right

Infinix has been launching new devices in the Kenyan market for the past few months. The latest one in their portfolio is the Infinix Hot 10T.

Infinix Hot 10T is the newest device in the company’s Hot 10 line which includes the Infinix Hot 10, Infinix Hot 10 Play, Infinix Hot 10S and Infinix Hot 10 Lite.

We’ve been using the Infinix Hot 10T for a good amount of time, taking it through its paces including a comparison review with the Samsung Galaxy A12 and now here’s our full review.

Before we begin, here’s what you get in the box:

• 10W power brick
• micro-usb charging cable
• hard back plastic case
• screen protector
• pair of earphones

Design

Infinix Hot 10T is a nicely designed smartphone. It has a glossy finish that weirdly not a magnet for fingerprint smudges.

The back features a curved lines pattern, a camera bump at the top left, a fingerprint sensor at the top centre and Infinix branding at the bottom left.

Infinix Hot 10T is huge and a little heavy but not that hefty enough for one-hand use.

The power and volume buttons are easily accessible, positioned centrally to where your thumb would naturally rest when using the phone.

The fingerprint sensor is also reachable for quick unlocking. You can use face unlock too. Both are equally fast.

At the bottom, we have a micro-usb charging port, headphone jack, microphone and speaker grille.

Coming to the front we have the 6.82″ display that has 720p resolution and 90Hz refresh rate. The top bezel houses the two LED flash and we also have the waterdrop notch.

The display served my multimedia needs very well. The good thing is that 90Hz is enabled by default.

I enjoyed browsing the web, scrolling social media, playing games, binging tv shows and trilogies. The display is surprisingly good even outdoors.

Everything was smooth and snappier thanks to the high refresh rate.

Infinix Hot 10T comes in various colours including Morandi Green, 7° Purple and 95° Black.

Overall, you’ll love using the Infinix Hot 10T.

Performance

Infinix Hot 10T rocks Android 11 and XOS 7.6. Both are latest operating system and user interface from Google and Infinix respectively so you are getting the best of both worlds.

Android 11 features a redesigned media player, bubble chat heads, grouped notifications, more restrictive permissions, notifications history, ability to pin apps in the share menu, a more granular Do Not Disturb mode, seamless updates, Multitasking pane, improved autofill, suggested apps, biometric authentication, among a host of other useful features.

XOS 7.6 also brings neat tricks up its sleeve including Social Turbo, Game Mode, Peek Proof, Theft Alert, tweaks to the graphical user interface, XClone, among others.

XOS still has its drawbacks – you still get bloatware apps and suggested apps to download. You can easily uninstall these unnecessary apps and install a third-party launcher to customize your experience on the Infinix Hot 10T.

Software aside, Infinix really packed heavy with the internals.

You are getting 4GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage. Infinix Hot 10T also rocks a Helio G70 chip and Mali G52 GPU.

At this price point, T better stand for terrific performance. I lauded the regular Hot 10 launched last year for its performance but the newer Hot 10T swept me off my feet.

Everything runs pretty smooth thanks to the hardware upgrade and the 90Hz refresh rate.

Infinix Hot 10T runs amazingly fast, speedily opening and switching between apps, powering my long gaming sessions including heavy games such as PUGBG, Genshin Impact, Among Us, Critical Ops, Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition, Two Dots, Alto’s Odyssey, Ninja Arashi 2, Asphalt 9 Legends, NFS No Limits, Dead Trigger 2 and Atomas with zero hiccups.

In terms of gaming settings, PUBG played at its highest settings with the High Frame option(it averaged around 118fps) and HD Graphics.

Infinix Hot 10T is the perfect workhorse

Light use on the Infinix Hot 10T will be a breeze, be it checking up emails, social media, and streaming. Talking of streaming, Infinix Hot 10T has stereo sound thanks to the bottom-facing speakers and the earpiece on the top.

It can get loud without the distortion so your entertainment needs are well met.

This performance makes it rank up high when compared with other rival smartphones in this price point and even those a little bit expensive.

Battery

Infinix Hot 10T comes with a huge 5000mAh battery. It was so hard to exhaust this battery even with my heavy consumption. My screen-on-time averaged between 6 and 8 hours on heavy and light use repectively.

You can extend the battery life with the Power Marathon features including Power Boost and Ultra-power saving and pull the smartphone’s battery for another day.

So you are in good hands in terms of battery life performance.

One drawback is that when the phone completely dies, you’ll need close to 3 hours to fully juice it up. Infinix included a 10W power brick.

It would have been handy to have a a type-C port and probably fast charging.

Cameras

The camera performance was another upgrade the Infinix Hot 10T excels at.

Infinix Hot 10T has a tripe camera setup at the back and a selfie camera housed in the waterdrop notch.

We have a 48MP main camera, a 2MP depth camera and an AI lens. At the front we have an 8MP selfie camera. We also have a quad-LED flash at the back and dual-LED flash at the top bezel .

You can play around with different modes such as Portrait mode, panorama, HDR, Beauty, 48MP mode, Short Video, Video, Video Bokeh mode, Slowmotion, AR shot, and Timelapse.

We have Super Night mode included to help with lowlight photography. I loved how it captured nighttime selfies and regular shots as you’ll see below that came out with sufficient colour and detail.

Photos turned out pretty well – respectable enough to share on social media platforms. You are getting pics with decent dynamic range, details and a little saturated colours for most shots.

You’ll love the background blur on selfies and regular shots. There’s video bokeh mode too for both selfie and regular videos. You can adjust the blur level if you want.

The Hot 10T also has the ability to shoot 2K video for both selfies and videos.

Here are some samples:

Selfies, Portraits

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Regular Shots

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Lowlight Selfies

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Super Night Mode Shots

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The cameras on the Infinix Hot 10T were pretty versatile and for a phone at this price point, you are getting your money’s worth and then some more in terms of photography and videography performance.

Verdict

Infinix Hot 10T is an incredible smartphone – well-rounded features including powerful performance, nicely designed, capable cameras, strong battery life, a decent screen with a high refresh rate and a dependable software experience.

Infinix put value where it mattered for smartphones at this segment with the Hot 10T. It now climbs up the ladder in our list of best Infinix smartphones to buy in the country.

Pricing and Availability

Infinix Hot 10T is being sold in two variants, the 4GB RAM and 128GB storage will retail for Ksh 17,499 while the 4GB RAM and 64GB version will go for Ksh 15,499.

You can purchase it online on XPARK and retail partner e-commerce sites like Jumia with free exclusive gifts[Direct Link] Infinix Hot 10T will be available in all authorized Infinix outlets countrywide listed below.

Town	Location	STORE NAME
Nairobi	Shops along Moi avenue	1. Ropem kc
		Art
		Ropem moi avenue
		Smart hub
		Photohive
		Carlifornia
		Lemuma
		Wataalam communication
	Shops along Tom Mboya	Infinix trends brandshop
		Central electronics
		Dream world communication.
		Queens mobile.
	Ronald Ngala street	Dalnurio
		Scorpio
		Bidan.
		Smart plus.
		Tricom cianda
	Mama Ngina street	Infochoice.
NAKURU	Shops along Mburu Gichua rd	Direct mobile
		Tenco exclusive brandshop
		Phonelink
		Winacom
		Pali capital
		Sparks
	Shops along Kenyatta avenue	Devi stationers
		Digitronics 2
		Shariff electronic
		Samchi telecom
		Ropem
		Brighter brands
		Target one
	Shops along Urma Dini rd	Techspa communication
		Nakuru brandshop
NYAHURURU	Shop along Kenyatta avenue	Mukuyu mobiles
		Jamara Swinger
		Happy go
NAIVASHA	Shop along biashara street	Narasha
		Netspace
		Celtech
KERICHO	Shop along john kerich road	Smartchoice
		Temik
		Shivling
	Shop along moi road	Evident communication
		Fairprice
		T.discount
		Advatech narok
	Shop along temple road	Vision gate
		Moonlight
		Roimax/kiene
		Keromatt
BOMET	Shop around Main Stage	Classic mobile
		South c
		Techplex
		Mercy communication
		Keromatt 2
KISII	Shops along Hospital road	Fone fun
		Matrix
		City Hub
		West link
	Shops along Mai mahiu kisumu raid	Galool. A
		Galool. B
		Digitex.
		Brothers
		Dabniil
		Vima
		New California
		Smartcomm
		Mueingene
	Shops along Sansora road	MJ phones III
		MJ phones
		One two One
		Kisii Matt
		Keromatt
MERU	Shops along NJURI NCEEKE STREET	Mkenya smartphone
		Mkenya annex.
		Qkuicom connect
		C & M fastcom
	Shops along KIRUKURI STREET	Snowman enterprises
	Shop Around (Uchumi supermarket)	Town mobile centre
	Shops along Ghana street	City mobile
EMBU	Shops along KUBUKUBU STREET	Telematt mobile
		Ideal quality Makuti
		Embumatt mobile
	Shops along Jomo Kenyatta Road	Risa Communication
MAUA	Shops in Maua behind Family bank	Skyhawk mobile
		Winners mobile
MURANG'A	Shops around K.C.B bank	Telefonica
	Shops along KCB street Kerugoya	1.Mercy communication.
NYERI	Shops along Kwa malori street	Mt Kenya
	Shops in Prestige mall	Decent one
		Comstar
		Qkuicom connect
NANYUKI	Shops along Kenyatta road	Mobile trendz
		Ecoris
	Shops along Lumumba road	Qkuicom connect
		Space mobile
	Shop around Joskaki hotel	Consumer mobile
MOMBASA	Digo Road	Gmax
		Wireless county
		Eruma communication
		Ricom
		Classic communication
		Snaap
	MWEMBE	Steplink
		Wireless Netzone
		Wincos
KILIFI		Mastermind
ELDORET	Shops along the Uganda road	Kosirai
		Magical Mobiles
		Chandni emporium
		Anand Will's
		Dhaval
		Dhaval 2
		Phoneart solutions 2
		Rudra mobile gallery
		Dhoni emporium
		Anand Khandala
	Oginga Odinga street	Bemotec(Eldoret) communication shops
	Shops along Ronald Ngala street	Ramzi Africa
		Kieorn enterprises
	Shops along Oloo street	Eldomatt Hyper
		Kerio stores
		Super selection
KISUMU	Shops along Odinga oginga street	Galool
		Marks
		Janely
		Damo
		Samchi
	Shops along jomo Kenyatta Street	Star mobile
		Tescom