Infinix Smart 3 Plus Review : Decent phone for decent price

Infinix, sub brand of Transsion Holdings is one of the major players in Africa and has been operating in India for few years. Earlier this week, Infinix Smart 5 Plus was released as online only phone. The phone is among the first to have a triple lens rear camera and a 6.2″tear drop notch in sub-8k price segment. Is it worth buying this phone? Read on!

Package content

Similar to most budget phone packaging, the Infinix Smart 3 Plus comes with minimal packaging. You get the phone, translucent back case, thin film screen protector, wall charger with detachable USB 2.0 cable. There are no headphones/earphones bundled (cannot expect, given the price).

Build

Smart 3 Plus has all plastic construction. But there are some design elements that make the phone look better than other phones in that price range. The glass finish back, tear drop notch display, minimal bezels all around the phone, triple lens setup at the back gives this phone a much better look. The bottom part of the phone has a USB 2.0 port (inverted), 3.5mm audio jack and a single speaker. SIM card holder is on the left side while volume rocker and power keys are on right side.

Given the low price tag, Infinix went with plastic materials and the phone feels very light weight. Keep the phone in your pocket and you may forget that there is a phone in your pocket. The downside though is that the phone feels brittle. The glass finish back is interesting. Look from a distance and it looks like glass. Hold the phone and you will see that it is plastic with mirror finish. 

Display

Though the display is 6.2″ in size, the resolution is 720p (HD) and in some cases, you will feel that its a stretch. But, if you are looking for a phone for whatsapp, web browsing and reading books, this one will do. The large display shows more content compared to phones with smaller displays.

The IPS panel gives very good viewing angle and can go upto 500nits brightness.

CameraThere are three lens at the back. While in ideal light conditions, the rear camera takes decent photos. In low light or dark environment though, the photo quality comes down drastically. Given the price point, I would not say that this is a problem. One of the interesting featuers in this phone is the ability to manage bokeh blur on the fly and after you take a photo. This helps those who want control on how much blurring is required. Front facing camera takes decent photos.

Battery

Thanks to low power chipset, 720p display, battery backup has been pretty solid. The phone comes with 3500mAh battery and you can expect full day battery life. The battery backup will come down if you put on two SIM cards and use a lot of 4G/3G data connectivity.

Performance

You have to remember that this phone costs just under 7k rupees and is not meant for heavy weighlifting. For day to day usage, the performance is decent. As expected, if I open too many applications or resource havey applications, there is stutter and lag. That is mainly due to 2GB of RAM and lack of powerful CPU cores. I have not really tried gaming on this phone as this phone is not meant for gaming. I did not see any lag for applications like dialer, messaging apps, whatsapp, telegram etc. Four A22 cores and 2GB of RAM. You cannot expect this to eat benchmarks for dinner. If you are just into Whatsapp, browsing, Instagram, facebook, reading, this phone will work out well. You cannot expect gaming and heavy multi-tasking. You need to spend more for that. 

XOS operating system

Infinix Smart 3 Plus runs XOS 5 Cheetah, based on Android 9 Pie. XOS has clean look and has some neat tricks that are helpful.

The OS comes with Samsung Galaxy Note like quick shortcut bar. To this you can assign action shortcuts like send message, mail or application shortcuts. This is definitely a very helpful addition to the OS.There is Faceunlock support and you just need to turn the phone towards your face for front camera to unlock the phone. Do note that this is not IR scanned face unlock and uses front facing camera to see your face.

Read mode is another interesting feature. You can assign applications to read mode and when you open that application, bluelight filter turns on. Other interesting features include Whatsapp mode, phone master cleaner, smart charge. For photos, there is a new feature that helps you remove any blurry unwanted images and duplicate images with one click action.

Conclusion

Infinix Smart 3 Plus comes with some very good features for the price and there are some negatives too. Given the price tag, we cannot expect more, well, except an extra Gigabyte of RAM. The phone looks good, thanks to glass like finish for back panel, large tear drop display. Smart 3 Plus feels a bit underpowered due to the limitations of the chipset and 2GB of RAM. These does not matter if you want the phone for simple day to day usage where in you check some mails, use Whatsapp and Facebook, read some websites and books (Kindle etc). For those who prefer gaming and heavy multi-tasking should pay a little more and get a phone that costs a bit more.