Affordable phones

You don’t need to spend lots of money to get the best phones: many of today’s mid-range phones punch way above their price tag. ere’s how to choose yours

- Carrie Marshall

If you're looking for a new smartphone, there are lots of very powerful and capable phones to choose from - but that doesn't mean you need to buy the latest and greatest models to get a phone you'll love. As we'll discover, there are plenty of more affordable options that deliver exceptional bang for your buck.

The smartphone market has changed very dramatically since 2015. Back then, flagship phones cost just over £500: the iPhone 6S started at £539 and the Samsung Galaxy S6 was £599. But as technology has improved flagship phones have become more expensive. The standard iPhone 13 now starts at £779; the Samsung Galaxy S21 at £769. Those are the prices of the base configurations: going for the models with the most storage takes the price past £1,100.

Capitalism hates a vacuum, so as the flagships became ever more expensive new brands rushed in to fill the space they'd left behind. Brands such as HTC, Huawei and Huawei's sub-brand Honor did it so well successfully that even Apple noticed: Apple's first-generation iPhone SE, released in 2016, was Apple's cheapest ever iPhone at just £359, an obvious attempt to get more people into the iPhone family instead of the Android one. Samsung had also decided to target budget buyers: at £249 its 2015 Samsung Galaxy A3 was less than half the price of the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.