Smartphones - the best budget buys

Remember when having a mobile phone the size of a large brick was a major status symbol?

That was the 1990s when only the rich and famous could afford the €2k* price of the very chunky Motorola 3200.

Then mobile phones shrank dramatically – and thankfully so did the price.

By 2000, Nokia dominated the market and charged just £30 for their by-now-petite basic models.

Then came the smartphone era that obliterated Nokia and saw both prices and phone size increase again.

Mobile phones now cost up to eight times more than they did in 2000 – recently surpassing those earliest brick phones.

The latest Samsung Galaxy Fold – whose screen folds out to double in size  - costs an eye-watering €2,379.

That’s almost the average monthly salary after tax.

However, a huge range of cheaper phones have come onstream too.

The average handset now costs around €400.

But there is huge variety across the market, with budget phones like the Alcatel 10.66 on sale for just €25 (Currys) – complete with a 1.8” screen and a 0.08MP camera!

Which? magazine - a much-respected UK consumer watchdog – thoroughly assess most phones on the market.

We’ve gone through its recommendations, weeding out some phones not available here, and found several excellent options at a decent price in Ireland.

For a phone costing €220, the Samsung Galaxy A21s, for example,  packs a mighty photographic punch.

I was astounded to see it has five cameras capturing a photo resolution up to 48 megapixels (MP).

Those low budget camera’s are also far from zippy. Which? reviewers flag processing speed issues on all five of our cheapest models, although they can be quite picky in this respect.

The least criticised is the Oppo A9 with Which merely noting “slight latency” on the most demanding tasks.

If you can afford to move up to the best mid-range phones, then you really can give those fancy iPhones and Galaxy Notes a run for their money.

Why pay nearly two grand when you can spend a quarter of that for the Samsung Galaxy S8, a “phenomenal phone” according Which? reviewers.

All five in our list of phones costing under €550 are awarded Best Buy status by Which?

If it’s camera power you want, the Galaxy A71 (€480 at DID) packs an enormous punch with a massive 6.7” screen and four cameras including one 68MP powerhouse.

If, like me, you can’t seem to use any phone except an Apple, there’s a iPhone SE offering great value at €499.

However, the SE is a bit of a step backwards from recent models with lower resolution cameras and a 4.7” screen.

Which?  gives a higher rating to the similarly sized but much earlier iPhone 7, costing €100 less at DID.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniaki (no longer with the company) also sees the iPhone 7 as a match for Apple’s later models.

When asked about the latest iPhone he once replied: “I’m happy with my iPhone 8 — which is the same as the iPhone 7, which is the same as the iPhone 6, to me.”

You may be wondering whatever happened to Nokia. Well, it has got back into the smartphone game but it had a lot of catching up to do alas.

None of its current models were considered cheap enough or quite good enough by WhIch? to meet the admittedly limiting criteria for our two tables.

But if you have a nostalgic hankering to play Snake on a classic old Nokia, the 3310 model can be bought online for as little as €15.