You can now pick up a smartphone for less than £100. But what do you get for your money?
The latest iPhone 5 or Samsung S5 will set you back up to £709 or £579 respectively. That’s a big wedge of cash just for a handset, even if these phones do everything from checking your heart rate to making the tea (only a matter of time).
But you don’t have to fork out hundreds of pounds to get a smartphone. These days there are more and more handsets in the sub-£100 price category, targeting gadget fans who just want the basics: emails, web browsing, social networking and navigation, even the old-fashioned calls and texts.
Combined with a cheap SIM-only tariff, buying a budget smartphone can save you money in the long run.
We’ve taken a look at what you can get for your money.
Motorola Moto E
This week saw Motorola launch a super cheap smartphone, the Moto E, for just £89.
The device is aimed squarely at first-time smartphone buyers, who want the basics of a decent Android phone at an affordable price.
The 3G Moto E runs the latest version of Google’s Android software and has a 4.3in display, a 5-megapixel camera and all-day battery life. There’s 4GB of built-in storage and a microSD card slot for adding up to 32GB more space.
There’s also 1GB of RAM, which is a lot for a cheap phone.
However, there’s bad news for selfie fans – although the phone has a 5MP camera, like on the original Moto G, there’s no front-facing snapper.
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EE Kestrel
Mobile network Everything Everywhere has launched what it claims is the cheapest 4G pay-as-you-go smartphone on the market, the EE Kestrel at £99.
Manufactured by Huawei, specifications include a 4.5 inch screen resolution, a 5MP camera, and 1GB of RAM. It runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean software with the promise of an upgrade to the latest Android 4.4 KitKat at a later date.
[SPOTLIGHT]You can buy the Kestrel on a handset-only basis or on a pay monthly tariff. The cheapest price plan is just £13.99 a month – for this you get the handset for free, 500MB of data, 500 minutes and unlimited texts each month.
Acer Liquid Z4
Another option is the Acer Liquid Z4 which isn’t just cheap but compact too and will take you back to the days when you could fit your phone in your pocket.
Prices start from about £82 and for that you get a dual-core 1.3GHz processor and 512MB of RAM – so about half that of other budget smartphones.
The phone comes running Android 4.2.2 along with Acer's Liquid UI on top. It also comes with “Quick Modes” which sets up the phone for different users – big and simple icons for oldies or restricted functions for kids, for example.
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Nokia X
The Nokia X is one of a family of phones that marks Nokia’s first foray into Android (its other smartphones run on Windows, a rival to Android).
The Nokia X isn’t actually released in the UK yet but when it is the rumour is it will cost a bargain £75.
The Nokia X boasts a modest 1GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, with 4GB storage (plus a miscroSD card slot for expansion) and 512MB of RAM. The battery is 1500mAh, which should last all day.
What to look for
If you’re not particularly technically minded then it can be tricky to know what’s important in a smartphone and what’s not.
The operating system (OS) is pretty important – it will determine which apps you can download. The main ones are Apple iOS (which can only be used on Apple devices), Android, Windows, and Symbian.
Screen size, resolutions and quality is important too – you want to be able to see what you’re doing.
If you’re into taking lots of photos you might want to check out the spec of your smartphone camera. Some rival point-and-shoot cameras while others are a lot more basic.
All the fiddling with apps and taking photos will use up your battery, so a decent battery life is important. At the minimum, you’d want it to last all day without needing charging.
Finally you want both memory for storage, and processing power so the phone does things quickly. In general, the more of both the better.
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