Branding Mobile Purchasing

Infinix Hot S3 – All Good Things Rolled Into An 8K Package

Infinix is not a brand that most of the people who walk around know of just yet – it is because their presence in the Philippines largely remains within the online marketplace. With the Infinix Hot S3, they’re making their presence fully known and leveling the playing field; Soon, we’ve been told, they’ll be joining the ranks of other smartphone brands as they open brick and mortar physical stores at key locations in the metro.

And so we get into their initial offering – the Infinix Hot S3, which may just prove to be quite the effective formula as they combine an impressive mix of hardware and features into a sleek and very current 5.7” 18:9 ‘infinity display’ handset amped up by a 4000mAh battery that features a 20MP front facing camera which is a godsend for those who are into selfies – which, let’s face it, most of the users are… all of this goodness for a retail price of Php 7,999. Yup you read that right… you can read it once again but its going to come out the same.

For just a peso shy of 8k pesos, you get what is arguably the most put together package for the entry level market sporting an 18:9 screen as of writing.

What’s under the hood you ask? The Infinix Hot S3 doesn’t disappoint as it packs an octa-core Snapdragon 435 in a 32GB ROM / 3GB RAM configuration. The resolution of the screen is 720 x 1440 HD+ which directly contributes to more battery life as the processors aren’t tasked to push too many pixels to the display.

It has a loudspeaker at the bottom which sounds fairly decent when consuming content whether it be music, games, or videos and that’s great because the package does not come with a pair of earphones. What it does come with however are screen protectors and a fitted silicone case to protect the device from the get-go, both of these are not pre-installed so do be careful when putting on the screen film.

The Infinix Hot S3 supports two carrier SIMs and a microSD card via a triple slot tray on the left of the device. Clustered to the right are the discernibly textured volume rockers and power button; Earphones go on top of the device and the microUSB charging port may be found at the bottom flanked by the speaker grille and the microphone.

To speed up entry into the device, a rear mounted fingerprint sensor is present and while it isn’t the fastest one around, it works well enough past the vibration confirming a successful read (there are two vibrations when it reads false). Apart from this, there are several gesture functionalities that can be configured for the Hot S3. Practically all technologies previously present such as double tap to wake, flip to silent, gesture to launch, and more can be found within the settings. I was amazed at the number of sensors present in the device that CPU-Z had detected.

Photography should be a very welcome experience as the Hot S3 provides 13MP at the back and 20MP in the front. Using it in reality however proved to be a little more challenging. The front camera has a fixed focus which means that it needs to be a certain distance before the subject becomes sharp – an arm’s length is a good rule of thumb to follow, coming in closer would yield blurred output and the built in beautification algorithm wouldn’t make that better.


The rear shooter is quite capable and can be manipulated professionally whenever necessary by changing the shooting mode (swipe towards the right a couple of times to do this); this one has proper focusing mechanism and playing around with it over time should allow for some fine image creation. It has a 4x digital superzoom feature that keeps the focus and brings in the field of view for a bigger output which is nice but artifacts are to be expected in this mode.


A lot of good things are going for the Infinix Hot S3 especially at the price it is going to be offered – Php 7,999. There’s talk about an upcoming promotion so watch this space for that very same one. Availability will be initially and exclusively through Shopee (link to be updated), at least until the stores become available to us within the first quarter of this year.

The Infinix Hot S3 is a solid contender for its market at Php 7,999!

About the author

Mark O.

Mark is an architect and artist who endeavors to design most anything that requires a little bit of thought into it.

Although writing is not considered a primary focus, a little too much time can yield many thoughts that are just begging to be written down.

Armed with a trusty array of content creation devices and surrounded with a continuous flux of technology and life, herein lies those that are fortunate enough to have been given presence through a little bit of movement and a whole lot of iterations.

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