A phone doesn’t have to cost you a whole paycheck, even a good one. Affordable, fully-featured smartphones are popping into the market more and more often, putting previously premium features into lower and lower price ranges.
Smartphone image via Shutterstock
Before we start, we have to decide what is actually classified as ‘cheap’. Smartphones in general aren’t all that affordable when bought outright (though we will be referring to outright, unlocked pricing in this story) with most costing over $800 and many even reaching over $1000. For the purposes of this story, we’ve included only phones that are cheaper than $600 Australian, though we have made sure to include a range of prices under this threshold.
Motorola Moto G
Price: $284
The Moto G set the standard for budget smartphones, and continues to hold onto that distinction year after year. It’s a sub $300 phone that can boast an IPX7 waterproof rating, a feature that many phones around the $1000 mark have yet to integrate. At its price point it’s obviously not the most high-powered smartphone on the market, but its functionality is more than adequate for its price.
The 3rd Gen Moto G features a 13MP rear camera with a colour-balancing dual LED flash and 5 MP front camera. The Gorilla Glass-protected HD display is a sizeable 12.7cm. One drawback is the meagre 16GB internal memory, though that can be expanded with an optional microSD card up to 32GB. The Moto G Is also 4G compatible, though very few smartphones, even the budget ones, aren’t these days.
Motorola Moto G | |
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Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 with 1.4 GHz quad-core |
GPU | Adreno 306 with 400 MHz | OS | Android Lollipop |
RAM | 2GB |
Camera | Front: 5MP, Rear: 13MP |
Display | 720p HD |
Battery | 2470 mAh |
Connectivity | 4G LTE, Dual micro-SIM, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, Micro USB, up to 32 GB microSD card, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n |
Dimensions | 142.1mm x 72.4mm x 6.1-11.6mm |
Weight | 155g |
OnePlus 3
Price: $550
The OnePlus 3 was recently named by our friends over at Gizmodo as ‘the best cheap phone you can buy‘, though it comes with one main drawback — a highly limited availability in Australia. In fact, the OnePlus 3 isn’t available at all in Australia, yet.
OnePlus has a great range of budget smartphones, however — from its OnePlus One, to the OnePlus 2 to the even cheaper OnePlus X. But the OnePlus 3 is the most ‘premium’ of its range, at the best price.
The OnePlus 3 boasts a fully metal construction for a truly premium look and feel, completed by the 15cm 1080p display. It also packs in a whole 6GB of RAM, and running a mod of Android called Oxygen OS, the OnePlus 3 is fully optimised to run nice and smoothly. Its 16MP rear camera can even shoot in RAW, while the front-facing camera boasts an impressive 8MP.
The only drawback to the OnePlus 3 is that its 3000mAh battery can run out in less than a day when overly taxed, though despite this it could easily be a competitor for smartphones that are twice its price.
OnePlus 3 | |
---|---|
Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 |
GPU | Adreno 530 | OS | Oxygen OS |
RAM | 6GB LPDDR4 |
Camera | Front: 8MP, Rear: 16MP |
Display | 1080p Full HD |
Battery | 3,000 mAh (non-removable) |
Connectivity | 4G LTE (Cat. 6), Dual nano-SIM, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, USB 2.0 Type-C, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac |
Dimensions | 152.7 x 74.7 x 7.35 mm |
Weight | 158g |
Xiaomi Mi5
Price: $425
The $425 Mi5 from Xiaomi sounds too good to be true — and that’s because it is. The Xiaomi is a great high-end phone for an incredibly cheap price, but getting your hands on one can be difficult. Without an official Australian importer, it can be hard to find Xiaomi’s phones in Australia, though there’s usually a way to get your hands on one.
If you do manage to find one, you can expect an impressively powerful phone for the price, built around the same Snapdragon processor as the new LG G5 or Samsung Galaxy 7. The metal and glass body has a premium feel, though the ‘pro’ version has a ‘marble-textured’ ceramic finish. $425 will get you the standard 32GB model, going up to $490 for the 64GB model, or $575 for the 125GB Pro model. This one’s worth keeping an eye out for.
Xiaomi Mi5 | |
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Processor | Snapdragon 820 Quad-core Kryo 1.8GHz |
GPU | Adreno 530 GPU | OS | Android 6.0 |
RAM | 3GB |
Camera | Front: 4MP, Rear: 16MP |
Display | 1920 x 1080 resolution |
Battery | 3000mAh (non-removable) |
Connectivity | 4G dual nano SIM, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, USB Type-C reversible, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac |
Dimensions | 144.55 mm x 69.2 mm x 7.25 mm |
Weight | 129g |
Kogan Agora 6
Price: $179
Price: $179
The Kogan Agora 6 is the newest, cheapest phone made by Kogan, and while you’re not going to get a stellar phone for $179, it is a smartphone that you can buy for $179. Kogan says that the Agora is a phone that boasts “amazing performance and features normally found in a phone many times the price of the Agora 6”, though we’ve yet to put it through its paces ourselves.
It does have a large, 5 inch HD display which is uncommon in cheaper phones, 2GB RAM and a 1.3 GHz OctaCore processor. Although it only has 16GB of internal storage, it has the option of adding a micro SD card up to 32GB, something some of the more expensive phones on this list offer.
One step up from the Agora 6 is the Agora 6 Plus, a $349 phone that Kogan says is comparable to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S7. We’re not so sure about that, but at its price, it could still be a neat little phone for some.
Kogan Agora 6 | |
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Processor | Octacore 1.3GHZ (MTK6753) |
GPU | Octacore 1.3GHZ | OS | Android 5.1 |
RAM | 2GB |
Camera | Front: 5MP, Rear: 8MP |
Display | HD IPS |
Battery | 2050 mAh |
Connectivity | Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, Dual Micro SIM, Micro USB, Micro SD (up to 32GB), Wi-Fi (2.4Ghz a/b/g/n) |
Dimensions | 142x70x8mm |
Weight | 134g |
iPhone 5s
While Android users have plenty of options when it comes to cheap phones, iOS devotees don’t have so many options. All of the iPhones available at retail right now will set you back over $800 when bought outright — but would you buy a phone that’s almost three years old? Despite its age, however, the 5s is a good little phone, which some even find preferable to the iPhone 6.
With a 1.7GHz dual-core A7 ARM processor, 1GB of RAM, dual-band 4G/LTE, an 8-megapixel camera with a dual flash and a 1570mAh battery, the specs of the 5s are obviously nothing special these days. However you can pick one up for cheap (at least as far as iPhones go) with new models being sold by Kogan for $469, and refurbished phones going as low as $399.
iPhone 5s | |
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Processor | 1.7GHz dual-core A7 ARM |
GPU | Apple M7 | OS | iOS 7 |
RAM | 1GB |
Camera | Front: 1.2MP, Rear: 8MP |
Display | 640 x 1136 IPS |
Battery | Li-Po 1440mAh |
Connectivity | Nano SIM, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, GPS, Lightning to USB, Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n) |
Dimensions | 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6mm |
Weight | 112g |
What are your favourite budget smartphones? Let us know in the comments!