• Hardware

  • Recommendation for a cheap modern phone

I am interested in buying a new phone, and I'd like some recommendations on what's available. Here are the characteristics I'm looking for:
  • Cheap. Ideally it would cost between $100 and $200.
  • Good battery life
  • Internet connection tethering via WiFi.
  • Solid. I'm usually careful with my phone, but it may fall on the floor a couple of times
  • Extendable storage with microSD cards
  • An audio port so I can use it as music player
  • Optionally, a physical keyboard, because Steve Jobs lied to all of us when he said virtual keyboards are anywhere near usable.
Things I don't care about:
  • Screen size. I'm not using my phone as a gaming platform or a web browsing machine. I just need it to make phone calls.
  • CPU power. Because packing an 8 core CPU just to play Angry Birds is moronic. Also, weaker CPUs must mean higher battery life.
  • Recent Android versions support. I'm still running Gingerbread on my SGS2 and it works fine.
In short: What would you recommend as a entry-level phone?
Galaxy Ace 3: 200$ (including 1 year CTC warranty)
Xperia J: 190$
Xperia U: 190$
Desire X: 210$
Nokia 515, their newest "feature phone".
Good product design with a great battery life, the bread and butter of Nokia.
It runs on Symbian series 40 and is available in dual SIM flavor.
Retails at around $150 in the US.
Nokia Lumia 820. It's a gerat phone for $250 (Lebanon), has a great dual core Krait processor and all of the stuff you care about. However, I'm not so sure about battery. You can always check benchmarks for that. However the 820 is amazing for it's price. An Xperia SL has similar hardware and costs like 100-120 dollars more.
as an upgrade to s2, would recommend you upgrade it to 4.1, cause none would be as good as it for that price range,
if for a new phone the lumia 820 is the great option ... almost same as the s2 hardware wise (windows mobile and newer cpu)
Stay away from the low end Sony device. Had the Sola and it sucked literally.
A used S2 would sell for 160 to 180$ perhaps so maybe you could increase your budget and you would find much more choices to pick?
I would suggest staying away from Xperia U, the battery runs for about 14 hours ( without internet or usage!)
why change phone when you have S2. just upgrade it and your good to go.
13 days later
There's the Sony Xperia Tipo and Miro going for $125 and $185, also the samsung Ace 3 for $189 and if you're willing to pay a bit more the HTC desire 300 for $249. All of which are with warranty.
khanem wrotewhy change phone when you have S2. just upgrade it and your good to go.
I really recommend this. Jelly Bean made tons of changes on the S2. I have had people wanting to change their S2 because it was slow and laggy, I just updated it and they have been using them for 1year+
Sony Xperia M.
Very good build quality especially for it's price range, it has pretty good battery life, SD card slot, 3.5 mm headphone jack, WiFi, 3G and the camera isn't bad either. It should cost $200.
24 days later
Looking for low end phones is a difficult task because everything is about tradeoffs. For flagship phones, the task is easier because it's a simple "yes/no" question: Am I willing to pay that much? If you are, you're guaranteed to get a phone that will fit your need. You have to be careful with phones on the low end to make sure you get it right and avoid prohibitively annoying features.

I bought the Acer Liquid Z3 yesterday.

Pros
  • Price: 79€ (a little less than 110$)
  • Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2
  • The body is light but doesn't feel cheap
  • Internal storage is extensible via microSD card
  • Battery: It fully charged in a matter of minutes, and exposes over 80% of battery level after 24hours of moderate usage
  • The screen is small but pretty
  • Dual SIM card. I didn't know this feature and I like it already. It will prove useful during my travels.
  • Charges through a microUSB port; I already have several compatible chargers and most of my colleagues/friends have one too, so it's easy to charge it. (you'd think that this would be standard by now, but Apple still wants to please its hipsters by selling them different plugs each year. God forbid they be compatible with the rest of the world. Ugh Apple, sometimes you...)
Cons
  • The screen doesn't react as well on touch input. This is not really noticeable for browsing, calling etc. It's only annoying when typing. I hate typing on virtual keyboards and even more so on this phone. I hope I'll get used to it soon, or else I'll start looking into alternative input methods.
  • 512MB of RAM is not huge. It's okay for most of the time, but run several apps simultaneously and you'll quickly hit a wall. Obviously I blame developers who treat memory as if it's an unlimited resource.
  • Acer installs some crap on the phone. It's easily avoidable but it's still useless. When will manufacturers understand that we do NOT want their additions.
  • Videos and pictures don't look nice. To be more specific they don't look as nice as they do on the SGSII.
  • The Camera sucks and is almost useless. Low picture quality, no flash, crappy auto-focus, ...
Overall review and thoughts
I started looking into cheap phones because I was highly disappointed by the SGSII (and all the other high end phones I could get my hands on). Phones, at least all smartphones today, are crappy by design and it looks like manufacturers enjoy them being like that. So I thought of making a list of relevant features I need and look for the cheapest phone that provide them.

The Liquid Z3 is what it is, a cheap smartphone. Given its price, I'd say it doesn't feel too cheap and mostly does the job. I'm excited about the high battery life, my SGSII barely lasts 24 hours of light usage (considerably less if I start playing games or watching videos).

Most of the cons I noted don't bother me too much. Except for the keyboard. But hey, I hate virtual keyboards of high end phones, I wasn't expecting to have the problem solved on a phone that costs 20% of the price.

Again, I love the feeling that it's cheap. I don't worry too much about it and figure that if this phone serves me well for one year, it will already be a big win.

Thanks for your suggestions everyone. They helped me get a good feel of what is done on the low end market and make a more educated purchase.
Congrats on finally getting the phone. It might be a bit late now, but I wonder if the Moto G would have fit your needs.
Here's a comparison. The only downside seems to be the non-extendable storage.
I considered the Moto G.
  • Better screen
  • Better multimedia capability
  • No micro SD is a deal breaker
  • It's a lot more expensive: The 8GB version costs double the Liquid Z3's price. The 16 GB version costs almost triple. At least according to the price list I consulted.
I think it's good to keep a thread going about cheap smartphones, they don't get as much coverage as the flagship products on this forum.
i can't believe no one suggested the Ace3, it has some pretty good specs for its price, 4.2.2, 1gb ram,dual core... i tried one for a week and it was smooth, no noticeable lags, price $200$
chassis wrotei can't believe no one suggested the Ace3, it has some pretty good specs for its price, 4.2.2, 1gb ram,dual core... i tried one for a week and it was smooth, no noticeable lags, price $200$
My mother has the Ace 2. You barely have enough space to put any apps on it. And it gets filled with unnecessary things you don't know about (because of Android) and you have to format the system like once per month to clear it from all the unnecessary things eating up your space.
The Moto G is worlds better than the Ace.