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Cheap Smartphones

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Shopping for a cheap smartphone is no easy task. There are dozens upon dozens from which to choose, and all seem to linger in the shadow of the latest Apple iPhone, which is decidedly not a budget choice. Perhaps the two best known (at least for now) smartphone manufacturers are Apple and Research In Motion (RIM), which makes the famous BlackBerry line. Other well-known smartphone producers include Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Palm, and LG.

How, then, to choose? With great care and patience, and by following the tips from our guide to the best cheap smartphones. What you'll find are plenty of models for very reasonable prices if, and this is a big if, you're willing to swallow a two-year service contract with the provider that's offering the cheap smartphone you want.

Our top two picks are the HTC Evo 4G (free/LetsTalk.com and Sprint) and the Samsung Epic 4G (starting at $40/LetsTalk.com and Sprint). Both are high-quality, versatile phones with large, gorgeous displays and excellent performance. We also like the HTC Droid Incredible 2 (free/LetsTalk.com and Verizon) for its sound quality and display, and the BlackBerry Curve 3G (starting at $30/AT&T, Amazon) for its call quality and messaging/email prowess. The fact that Apple now has a sub-$50 iPhone on the market will certainly excite a lot of smartphone fans, but after taking a close look at the iPhone 3GS 8GB (starting at $49/AT&T), we're underwhelmed by its small screen, call quality, and low-resolution camera. The BlackBerry Torch (starting at $49 with AT&T, Amazon) also disappoints, particularly on the multimedia front.

We based the prices for the cheap smartphones in this buying guide on the assumption that you'd be signing up for a new contract (usually two years), which may be the only route to the lowest, and sometimes free, price. There's certainly no shortage of expensive smartphones to ogle with their faster hardware, superior cameras, better multimedia features, and more built-in storage for your files. But our niche is the budget market and here we found many good smartphones on the cheap. The top nationwide cellular service providers -- Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, and T-Mobile -- offer inexpensive smartphones plus the data plans you need to get the most out of these devices. Each service provider sells plans at different prices, although you may be required to purchase a specific plan or plan options if you buy a particular smartphone.

Shopping for a smartphone is more challenging than shopping for many other electronics because of the array of functionalities and carriers' propensity to tweak the phones with their own software or feature sets. You have to begin somewhere, though, so let's start with the phone's network support. We're seeing more and more smartphones that support 4G, the latest thing in cellular network technology. Long story short, a 4G network equals super-fast networking speeds -- a welcome advance for multimedia purposes, such as playing YouTube videos, although speed doesn't do much to improve overall performance. If you think you want to buy a 4G phone, check with the service provider to make sure 4G is available in your area. 4G networks are pretty new, and cellular service providers are still rolling it out across the country.

The features on a smartphone are fairly standard but vary in the details. Texting has become so popular that it's hard to imagine a smartphone manufacturer giving short shrift to a phone's texting abilities. If you're a frequent texter, you want a cheap smartphone with an easy-to-use physical or virtual keyboard. Today's smartphones are also becoming more sophisticated web browsing devices and will continue evolving along this continuum given the spread of 4G technology. That being the case, you'll surely want a cheap smartphone with a good web browser. Smartphones increasingly pull double-duty as multimedia devices, so your cheap smartphone should include audio and video software that's easy to use, and the video and audio quality should be solid. In a similar vein, your cheap smartphone should feature a respectable camera. When cameras first started to appear in cell phones, they were not very good at all, offering resolution of about 1 mp. Nowadays, most smartphone cameras have a resolution of 5 mp or better and often take more than decent photos. Many smartphone cameras also shoot video and some even record video in high definition (720p). In order to enjoy all that video and web goodness, you need a cheap smartphone with an excellent display. Most smartphone displays range from about 3.5 to 4 inches.

There are two things in particular that make smartphones "smart" -- the phone's operating system and the applications, or apps, that run on the phone. Apple's iPhones and BlackBerry phones run on their own unique operating systems, and many other smartphones now run some version of Google's Android. Android has become very popular over the past few years, and that's reflected in the vast number of apps now available for Android phones. Apple's App store is legendary for the incredible number of apps it offers. BlackBerry's app pool isn't quite as large as Android's or Apple's, but there are still plenty of good programs for BlackBerry users. Before you settle on a smartphone, it's worth stopping by the phone's app store to check out the inventory. Some of the most popular app categories include games, productivity, and finance. You'll have to pay for most (usually less than $30 per app), but there are some free apps, as well.

Powering all this amazing technology is the smartphone's battery. Smartphones are packed with so much stuff that the power source can quickly run dry, especially if you spend lots of time using a 4G network, playing video, or surfing the web. If you're a heavy smartphone user, prepare to measure a phone's battery power in hours rather than days. Most smartphones, regardless of price, need to be charged at least once a day when used heavily, although frugal users can stretch that to a few days. But what's the fun in that?

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BlackBerry Bold 9780
T-Mobile myTouch 4G
Motorola Droid 2 Global
Apple iPhone 3GS 8GB
BlackBerry Torch
HTC Droid Incredible 2
BlackBerry Curve 3G
HTC Evo 4G
Samsung Epic 4G

 

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