Infinix recently launched the new Infinix S4 in India starting at a price of Rs 8,999. The device comes in a single variant with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage, this price segment faces stiff competition from several other well-known brands that have already made it successful in the price range. The Infinix S4 offers a triple camera setup on the rear and a decent design, these aspects add value to the smartphone makes it a good choice. The strong question is, with stiff competition from Xiaomi and Realme in the sub Rs 10,000 segment, does the Infinix S4 have the needed performance to make it a good buy?
In this review, we check out the Infinix S4 and use it through the week to understand its strengths and weaknesses.
Design and Display
The Infinix S4 comes with a sleek design and has a gloss gradient rear panel design, while the back panel is completely made of plastic the device still looks pretty decent because of the glossy gradient design. The rear of the Infinix S4 comes with a triple AI camera setup aligned with a quad-LED flashlight to offer enough lighting support in low light conditions. The device also has a fingerprint sensor on the rear of the device just above the Infinix branding. The front of the device is mostly taken up by the display, there is a water drop display notch on the Infinix S4 that holds the selfie camera of the device. As in the case of most other phones, there is an option to hide the notch if you don’t like them.
The device comes with the volume and power controls on either side of the device. The left of the device also houses the dual-SIM and the microSD card slot. The bottom of the Infinix S4 houses the microUSB port and a speaker grille along with the 3.5mm audio jack. The front of the display is mostly taken up by the huge 6.26-inch display with an HD+ resolution, the aspect ratio on the device is 19.5:9.
The color reproduction of the device is decent and the display offers satisfactory viewing angles in outdoor conditions. In bright sunlight, the device wasn’t difficult to use and the display appeared bright enough for most conditions. The Infinix S4 is pretty light and fits comfortably in the hand despite the huge display.
We found the display on the Infinix S4 to be pretty impressive and the brightness was enough to comfortably use in outdoor conditions, auto brightness worked efficiently to adjust with the environment and we found the software optimization good on this upfront. There is also an eye care mode on the smartphone to adopt the display accordingly to suit night usage. The back of the smartphone attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints because of the glossy finish that it comes with, the device also ships with a TPU case in the box to help reduce the smudges and fingerprints being accumulated.
Performance and Software
The Infinix S4 comes with a MediaTek Helio P22 chipset that is based on an Octa-Core 2.0 GHz processor and has the PowerVR GE8320 GPU. The device comes only in one variant and has 3GB of RAM along with 32GB of internal storage. The storage on the device can be expanded to up to 256GB via a microSD card slot, while the chipset on the device isn’t the most powerful, it helps the device handle all daily tasks without much of a lag. Surprisingly despite throwing several applications at the phone simultaneously, the Infinix S4 handled it pretty well and most applications opened within a second or two of tapping the icon. In our regular usage, we found no noticeable lag whatsoever on the device and the smartphone delivered an overall good experience.
Lightweight games like Temple Run had no issues and functioned very smoothly on the Infinix S4, however putting anything a little more intense made the phone suffer. The Infinix S4 is clearly not a phone if you are a heavy gamer and we would not recommend this phone for gaming. The performance is decent for the price and nothing awe-worthy. When we loaded a game of PUBG, the game defaulted to the lowest setting which was expected, however, even at this low setting the game didn’t perform without a stutter and showed occasional frame drops.
The Infinix S4 has fingerprint and an face unlock option to securely unlock the smartphone, the fingerprint sensor works quite fast and accurately without any noticeable lags. The fingerprint scanner also doubles up to allow capturing of images, accepting phone calls and dismissing alarms using the gestures. The Infinix S4 runs on Android 9 Pie based XOS 5.0 software the UI comes loaded with several features and applications. The worst part about the software on the Infinix S4 is the bloat that comes with it.
The bloatware on the Infinix S4 is unending, the included apps are XTheme, Phone Master, Flipkart, PHX Browser, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, weather, Opera news, the worst part about this is the fact that some of them including XClub and Phone Master apps cannot even be uninstalled from the smartphone. While the above apps do add a little value for a small set of users, we wish there was a way to uninstall these applications for those who don’t need them.
Camera
The Infinix S4 comes with a triple camera setup including a primary 13MP sensor with an f/1.8 aperture, an 8MP sensor with an f/2.2 aperture for 120-degree ultra-wide captures and a 2MP camera for depth detection. The rear camera is accompanied by a Quad-LED flash setup. The selfie camera on the Infinix S4 is equally capable and uses a 32MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture. The camera application on the device is very simple to use and fluidic. There are multiple options easily accessible including AI Camera, Beauty, Bokeh and AR Shot which is more similar to the AR Emoji on the Samsung smartphones.
The AI camera in the smartphone allows automatic adjustment of several capture parameters to get a perfect shot in the different lighting conditions, the camera has been trained with multiple scenes and can identify the scene and subject being captured to automatically enhance the image by tweaking a few settings. Both the front and the rear camera can shoot in FullHD and the front camera also supports features like HDR, Selfie Portrait and Beauty mode.
The rear camera does a decent job for the price and captures images clearly, the daylight outdoor shots were above average with decent clarity and good color reproduction overall. The phone does a pretty good job at macros and close body shots as well, we noticed immense detail in these images. The autofocus is pretty fast and consistent. The wide-angle lens in the Infinix S4 was successful in capturing a good quality image with just a little flex distortion. One major trait we noticed was that the camera detected the clouds and made the sky look much greyer than it actually is. The sky looks very different in the default AI Cam when compared to the wide-angle mode.
The low light capturing ability of the Infinix S4 is just about average, we noticed a lot of noise in the images and the final results were too grainy. The bokeh mode in the Infinix S4 helps by blurring out the background and highlighting the subject in the capture, but the edge detection of the software wasn’t great and we found skewed results. The front camera is a 32MP sensor and does a pretty good job of capturing selfies, the 32MP sensor captures great detail especially in daylight. There is also a Bokeh mode in the front camera to blur the background using a software algorithm. The overall sharpness and color reproduction of the camera is unmatched in the price segment.
Verdict
The Infinix S4 is one of the only smartphones in the price range to come with a 32MP selfie camera, the closest competition is from Xiaomi which is priced Rs 1,000 more than the Infinix S4. The device offers good competition in the segment and it is a very suitable device for a moderate user and if you are not into intense gaming. The device has a good vibrant display and a long-lasting battery, the overall performance of the smartphone is pretty decent. The software of the device is loaded with a lot of bloatware and might be one of the only downsides of the device.
