Infinix Hot 9 Play

INFINIX HOT 9 PLAY

The price of Infinix Hot 9 Play in Kenya is 12,400 shillings. It comes with a large 6,000 mAh battery, 32 GB storage, and a large 6.82 inches display. It also has a 13 MP dual camera and 2 GB of RAM. Hot 9 Play comes in colors Midnight Black, Quetzal Cyan, Violet, and Ocean Wave.

Infinix Hot 9 Play price in Kenya and key features

Infinix Hot 9 Play has many of the features that have come to influence the design of many of 2020’s phones across the whole industry. It has a 6.82 inch IPS LCD display with a water-drop notch cutout to house the front-facing camera. The bezels are not that narrow and the chin is a little noticeable. The phone is a plastic build, both frame, and back. On the back, it has a dual-camera setup and a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. At the bottom, we expected a micro USB connector and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Performance

The Infinix Hot 9 Play is a basic entry device, so not is expected from it, despite the inviting optics. It runs the entry-level Mediatek A25 MT6762D chipset, a 1.8 GHz Cortex A53 CPU, and a PowerVR GE8320 GPU. It comes with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage, in addition to dedicated expandable microSD storage. The performance is decent and expected. Day to day use isn’t a hassle but anything intensive or running high-end graphics isn’t optimized on this phone. You might also like Infinix S5 Pro.

Camera

Certainly, the Hot 9 Play isn’t one to impress with the cameras, as it has to keep everything simple. The device comes with a dual camera set up, with a 13 mp primary camera and a 0.3 mp light sensor. The photos are usable but one should expect anything past basic quality from them, especially if the lighting conditions are anything short of optimal. It gets worse as low light persists to a point where the photos are pretty unusable. Video is basic, but shaky and lacking dynamic range. On the front, we have a basic 8 mp which tries to keep a fight, but past selfies, there isn’t much use for it.

Battery

Hot 9 Play comes with a 6000 mAh nonremovable Li-Po battery, which is where it truly shines. The battery is big and can comfortably go 2 or more days on a charge. That’s a lot of power, so lots of content consumption and mild gaming. We still keep the micro USB connector so we get 10W standard charging which would fill this unit in around 4 hours, which a long time. This unit should optimally be charged overnight. You might also like Infinix Note 7 Lite.

Software

The Infinix Hot 9 Play runs the Android 9 Pie-based HIOS 5.5 custom skin straight out of the box. It would have been logical to run a lighter OS on this kind of feature but HIOS is awash with bloatware that often becomes an irritant. Ad services and preinstalled apps, some of which can be uninstalled plague this UI. However, once you learn how to navigate these pitfalls, it gets easier. The experience is not optimal but the UI works.

Conclusion

The Infinix Hot 9 Play is a practical phone for a practical price. Other than design ergonomics, every other feature should admittedly be considered with a pinch of salt when it comes to performance. It still is a very attractive value proposition at entry level pricing and could be an attractive unit at those particular price points. See also Infinix Smart 4.

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