Have you always baulked at paying £500 or more for a fancy iPhone or a top of the range Samsung Galaxy? The good news is that a revolution is happening in the world of smartphones, with a new range of budget models for less than £150, which are able to do nearly everything the pricier phones can do – and with an ease of use that means you don’t want to hurl them against the wall in frustration.
Companies, including Motorola and Nokia have released feature-packed phones costing under £150 – bargains that question why anyone would ever pay more, something that simply wasn’t the case even just a year ago.
But not all low-cost smartphones are gold, so here’s a quick guide to those worth considering.
Motorola Moto E
Price: £75 Available for this budget price with a prepay phone plan. It gets the basics right, has a good feeling frame, decent screen and a responsive, snappy experience – leagues apart from most of its sub-£80 competition.
Features like a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass screen, a water resistant P2i nano coating and all-day battery life. It also runs Google’s Android and will be updated to the latest version “Lollipop” very soon.
Downsides are that the 5-megapixel camera is poor, there is no front-facing camera for selfies and storage is limited to just 4GB, but there is a micro SD card slot for adding more space for music, movies and photos.
Verdict: a very cheap smartphone that’s got the basics right.
Motorola Moto G 2014
Price: £150/£135 This slightly more expensive Moto G offers more bang for your buck than any other smartphone currently available at this price. Under £150 for one with a 5-inch screen or £135 with a 4.5-inch and a faster 4G mobile broadband connection, it is a mid-range model costing the same as a budget phone.
The Moto G has a sharp HD screen, the latest version of Google’s Android Lollipop, snappy performance and solid build quality. A Gorilla Glass screen resists scratches and a P2i nano coating makes it water resistant, while a replaceable back cover is available in a variety of fun colours.
The 5-megapixel or 8-megapixel camera on the back (depending on version) is nothing spectacular, but will do for simple pictures, while the front-facing camera is solid for selfies and video chats. Both versions have 8GB of memory and a micro SD card slot for adding more space for entertainment.
Verdict: our choice as the best smartphone going for under £150
Nokia Lumia 635
Price: £80 One of Microsoft’s new budget Windows Phones loaded with the latest 8.1 software. It is solid, has a removable coloured back shell and is light and comfortable to hold, feeling like it can take a knock without issue.
It has a 5-megapixel camera, without a flash, capable of average photos similar to the Moto E. There is no front-facing camera so selfies will be difficult.
The biggest corner cut is the screen, which is low resolution and can appear blocky.
It doesn’t have adaptive brightness, so manual adjustment of the backlight is required, or the screen can be too bright indoors or unreadable outside.
It does have the faster 4G and snappy performance, however.
Windows Phones lack the large catalogue of apps of Android. But most major apps are there, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, WhatsApp and even Angry Birds.
Verdict: solid and cheap, but better options available
EE Kestrel
Price: £89 The cheapest Android with 4G, it is built by China’s Huawei for the EE mobile phone network. Available for £89, it feels a little cheap, but it is thin and light, especially compared to some of its chubby competition. The headphones port is strangely positioned in the side of the phone, which might cause issues for some.
The 4.5in screen is not particularly crisp, but is good enough for watching YouTube videos or browsing the web. The 4G network makes downloading and playing videos faster than most other 3G budget smartphones.
The decent quad-core processor makes the phone snappy, while the battery keeps it going for a good day without activating power saving modes. It has 8GB of built-in storage and a micro SD card slot for adding more space for movies, photos and music.
A 5-megapixel camera and 1-megapixel front-facing camera capture decent photos, but both struggle in low light. The Kestrel also has a simplified software option, which could be ideal for the non-tech savvy.
Verdict: the cheapest 4G Android phone available with solid performance
Function versus fashion
The Moto G has shown that solid, easy-to-use smartphones that do almost anything anyone could want a phone to do, can cost under £150. It begs the question: what more do you actually get when you spend £539 on the latest iPhone 6?
The simple answer is, functionally, very little. In the same way a Kia can transport people from A to B exactly as a BMW does, a Moto G can make calls, send texts, access the web, emails and video, just like an iPhone 6 can.
But in the same way a BMW is a nicer place to be than a Kia, an iPhone is a more premium smartphone experience.
The most obvious is the build and thickness. An iPhone, or the latest Samsung Galaxy S, is thinner, lighter and better built than a budget smartphone, using premium materials that feel nicer in the hand.
It also has a crisper, better quality screen and higher performance with a more powerful processor. The camera is of much higher quality, too, capable of replacing most dedicated point-and-shoot cameras, while features such as fingerprint sensors make using the smartphones more secure.
In the end, though, buyers have to decide if fashion, features and premium materials are worth over three times more money, when functionally they’re almost the same.
