When Infinix launched its latest smartphone, the Infinix Hot 8, last month, it made quite some bold claims in the statement it sent following the launch. If we can quote what we made of that particular statement in our coverage, “According to Infinix, the battery lasts for up to 4 days. That, however, comes at a cost. It takes the device up to 3 hours to be fully charged.”
Well, given that Infinix did avail to us a test unit of the device, I took it for a spin over the last few weeks to see how it fares and, more importantly, if it does live up to those claims.
First things first, the Hot series is no Note series. The latter, among Infinix devices, is what is known for its extra-long battery life. With the 5,000mAh battery unit and the software modifications Infinix usually does to keep Android’s ever resource hunger at bay, it almost gets there.
As can be seen in the screengrab below, the farthest I was able to stretch the Infinix Hot 8 on any given day throughout my stay with the device, is 3 days.
That is a day short of the claimed 4 days but damn, it’s more impressive than any other smartphone we have tested this year – and those have been many.
In the 3 days I am talking about, there was an extended period – of a few hours – where I had the device turned off to avoid disturbance as I attended a critical meeting so, maybe that did help stretch the device’s endurance a bit. However, 2 days of battery life were almost always assured.
This is on a usage pattern that revolves around a mix internet use on both mobile networks as well as wireless hotspots for the entire time the device is turned on, at least half an hour of voice calls on a good day, a few hours of shuffling between several chat apps and Twitter and, on occasion, a bus app which means constant pressure on the device’s location services.
In all that, the Infinix Hot 8 managed to hold up its end of the bargain which is very impressive in a day and age where there are devices that cost northwards of Kshs 80,000 that can barely last from morning to noon, their superior technology be damned.
The other claim, that of taking up to 3 hours to charge fully, checks out. While I was never consistent in observing how long the device took to charge up, the one time I powered it down all the way to 3%, it took just under 2.5 hours to juice up fully.
That is rather annoying as it means you have to wait and wait if you insist on leaving the house with a fully-charged battery. Of course, that is largely unnecessary given the massive battery size. You can just go all the way to 40 or 50% and you will be fine for most of your active day.
Another negative in this whole affair is Infinix’s insistence on sticking with the microUSB at a time when USB Type-C is no longer a strange sight on budget devices.
A lot of what the Infinix Hot 8 has going for it besides the battery capacity is, obviously, the software customizations which Infinix has gotten a hang of very well, even at the expense of some services that need to always stay in memory. There is also the fact that there are far fewer sensors waking up every now and then to monitor this or that. And of course, a HD display goes a long way in translating the savings from the less number of pixels being pushed to extended power savings.
I don’t know what the overall contribution of the chipset in use is, given that it, combined with other factors, ends up delivering less than optimal performance but its Taiwanese maker does offer us a hint of what it may be doing under the hood: “The MediaTek Helio A22 is an incredible generational upgrade of mainstream smartphones; pushing up the bar on features and the boundaries of longer battery life.”
It is possible to squeeze even better results on the Hot 8 depending on one’s usage.
While this is largely a subjective approach, because I prefer it that way, if you are keen on the objective side of things, with a touch of abstraction – benchmark apps and all – then you need to have a look at .
