Infinix S4 Review

Infinix has been selling budget smartphones in India for quite some time now and the company has focused on the sub-Rs. 10,000 price segment. We have reviewed several models from the Infinix brand including the Note 5, Hot S3X and the Note 5 Stylus (Review). The Infinix S4 is the latest smartphone from the company and comes with three rear cameras. The phone is powered by a big battery. Is the Infinix S4 better than its rivals? We review it to find out.

Design of the Infinix S4

At first glance, it is a bit hard to believe that the Infinix S4 is priced under Rs 10,000. The Infinix S4 is well designed and comes with a glossy gradient back panel. The Infinix S4 comes in three colour variants – Nebula Blue, Space Grey and Twilight Purple. We got the Nebula Blue colour variant of the Infinix S4 for review and it looks stunning.

Looking at the glossy back panel, it seems that it is made of glass but plastic has been used to make it. Due to the glossy back panel, fingerprints are easily visible on it. You will get a case from Infinix in the retail box. Infinix S4 has a big display with a waterdrop notch and the bezels are also not thick.

Our review unit came with a pre-applied screen protector and an extra one was provided in the retail box. The earpiece on the Infinix S4 is quite thin and is placed between the frame and the display. We found the phone to fit comfortably in the hand and it wasn’t too bulky. Infinix has placed the power and volume buttons on the right side of the phone.

We found that the volume buttons are placed a bit higher but still work well. The SIM tray is placed on the left side of the phone. The triple camera setup on the back of the phone will grab your attention. It is not common to find three rear cameras on the back panel of a phone in this price segment, so we were a little surprised to see the triple rear camera setup in the Infinix S4.

For your information, let us tell you that the camera module is slightly raised. There is a quad-LED flash just below the camera module. For security, you will find a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone, the hand can easily reach the sensor. At the bottom of the phone, you will find a loudspeaker grill, 3.5 mm headphone jack and micro-USB port.

Infinix S4 specifications and software

The Infinix S4 sports a 6.21-inch HD+ (720×1520 pixels) display with an aspect ratio of 19.5:9 and uses 2.5D curved glass for display protection. It has a screen-to-body ratio of 89 percent. There was no problem in reading the display outdoors. The display is crisp and we were happy with its output, although we did not find any way to change the color temperature.

The phone has an eye-care feature that filters out blue light to protect the eyes from strain. The Infinix S4 uses the MediaTek Helio P22 octa-core processor. Slowly, the use of this chipset is now becoming common in this price segment. The same processor has also been used in Realme C2 (Review) and Oppo A1k.

There is only one variant of Infinix S4 which is equipped with 3 GB RAM and 32 GB storage. It has a dedicated microSD card slot with the help of which it is possible to increase the storage up to 256 GB. Connectivity options include Bluetooth version 5, Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n, GPS and 4G VoLTE. To power the phone, a 4,000 mAh battery has been provided and a 10 watt charger will be available in the retail box.

The dual-SIM Infinix S4 runs XOS 5.0 based on Android Pie. This is the latest version of Android and our review unit was running the April security patch which is acceptable. The phone has some UI customisations and doesn’t look like stock Android.

The phone also has theme support and you can download other themes through the Themes app pre-installed on the phone. The Infinix S4 also comes pre-installed with a few apps like PHX Browser, Google Apps and Danger Dash. PHX Browser sends spammy notifications so we uninstalled it.

Infinix S4 also comes with some useful features that help the user like the phone has AIBox feature which clubs the incoming notifications and shows alerts from only those apps that you want to see. It also has a smart panel which can be accessed from anywhere and includes some shortcuts.

Apart from this, the phone also has an intelligent voice broadcast feature that reads out the weather and your day’s schedule after the alarm goes off in the morning. We tried this feature and it works fine but the voice or language cannot be changed. It also reads out WhatsApp and Facebook updates.

Infinix S4 performance, battery life and camera

The Infinix S4 uses the MediaTek Helio P22 processor and its performance is good. The phone did not slow down while scrolling through menus or switching between applications. There was no problem in multitasking due to the 3GB RAM in the phone. The Infinix S4 takes a little longer than usual to load large apps.

PUBG Mobile was set to low preset, graphics quality to smooth and frame rate to medium. The phone did slow down a bit during gaming. After playing the game for 20 minutes, the battery dropped by 5 percent and the phone also got a little warm towards the upper part of the back. We found that the fingerprint sensor and face recognition feature unlock the smartphone quickly.

The Infinix S4 is powered by a 4,000mAh battery. We used WhatsApp, Google Maps for navigation, ran some benchmarks and took some camera samples. In our HD video loop test, the phone lasted for 17 hours and 35 minutes. The bundled charger charges the phone up to 31 percent in 30 minutes and takes about 2 hours to fully charge the phone.

Talking about the camera setup, Infinix S4 has three rear cameras, a 13-megapixel primary sensor with aperture F / 1.8, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera with aperture F / 2.2 and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. There is a quad-LED flash just below the camera module. For selfies and video calling, there is a 32-megapixel selfie camera, whose aperture is F / 2.0.

The camera app has AI feature and AI will be enabled by default in Infinix S4. Buttons are available for HDR and flash, as well as a button to switch to the wide-angle sensor. Modes like beauty, bokeh, video and AR shot will also be available in the camera app.

Photos taken in daylight with the Infinix S4 were good. The phone locks focus quickly and the exposure was also correct. Details were also captured well when shooting outdoors. Photos taken in macro mode were sharp and the photo quality of the Infinix S4 surprised us. The phone maintains a distinction between the subject and the background.

You can choose the level of blur when taking portrait shots but we found the edge detection quality to be below average. The quality in low light was not very good. Photos were not sharp and grains were visible in the pictures. Selfies taken with the front camera came out well. The phone also has a face detection feature which helps in getting the right exposure before taking a picture. The phone is capable of recording videos at a maximum resolution of 1080p. There is no stabilization support in the phone.

Our verdict

In the price segment of less than Rs 10,000, the Infinix S4 is equipped with three rear cameras. Its wide-angle sensor comes in handy when shooting in landscape mode and the primary sensor captures good pictures in daylight. But the low-light camera performance of the phone is not very good. The MediaTek Helio P22 processor is not a very powerful chipset in this price segment but it still works well.

At Rs 8,999, the Infinix S4 seems to be a bit premium over the Realme C2 (Review) that is currently available in the market. The Infinix S4 sports a fingerprint sensor and has slightly better cameras. The Redmi 7 can also prove to be a strong alternative to it.