BUYER BEWARE: THE BUDGET PHONE OPTION

Budget phones can offer a good deal – but they’re not for everyone

If mid-range phones are so appealing, then what about budget phones? Do they offer an even better balance of price and performance? Well, in a word: no. There’s no fixed definition or price point for what constitutes a budget phone and what doesn’t, but we’d say that anything below around $600 or so counts as budget.

For the occasional smartphone user and those who really have very little to spend, budget phones are fine – they’ll work okay, and run all your apps, and keep you connected. Down at this end of the market though, you will start to notice laggy performance and serious slowdowns in your apps, so much so that the most demanding games and apps might struggle to run properly at all.

Phone camera quality is usually significantly poorer once you get to the lowest price points as well. Budget phones will still take photos, of course – but they’ll show more noise and blurring than mid-range phone cameras do, and they’ll really struggle with dark scenes where light is at a premium.

We’re generalising a bit here, but do be careful before buying one. The extra $200 or so that you need to spend to get into the mid-range is usually well worth it, whether that’s reflected in the speed of the internal processor, the amount of RAM you get, the quality of screen, or how well the phone is able to capture photos and videos.

You’re definitely not going to get features such as wireless charging or waterproofing at these lowest price points, and nor will you see upgrades like faster refresh rates on the screen or Dolby-Atmos-compatible sound.

Google actually makes a lightweight version of Android called Android Go, especially for low-powered phones: it’s mainly aimed at users in developing countries, but it simplifies apps such as Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube to make them less demanding on your phone’s hardware as well as its network connection.