Budgetphones to dial for

Divyanshu Dutta Roy

If you rummage through your belongings and take stock of all the 21st century doodads that you can’t imagine life without, chances are that your smartphone will come right on top. Since the industrial revolution, no other gadget or gizmo has taken us in like that do-it-all slab of glass, metal and plastic with a heart of silicon. From finding your way to finding out about your destination, from having a bit of fun to sharing funny moments with your friends, it really is astonishing how this ubiquitous pocket computer keeps us constantly informed, entertained, and connected.

But even as more people pick up these lifesavers, the ones that steal the show are hardly known for their affordability. Often, these flagship phones come with a premium for the brand, the perfect example of which is Apple, which sells its iPhones at roughly three times of what it costs in the factory.

However, as Bob Dylan had wisely noted, The times, they are a-changin’. From Xiaomi to Motorola, to Acer and even Nokia (now Microsoft), everybody is now flocking towards the low end of the spectrum — not in terms of specs but prices. Here the margins are narrow but the volumes are huge. Some companies are doing so well in these waters that it’s difficult for them to even keep up with the demand and some are so bullish about the prospects that they are not even making any profits on these phones just yet, but are counting on bigger sales and market-share command.

Thanks to all the healthy jostling between companies, it’s the consumer at the end of the day benefiting the most. These days, when you pick up a budget handset, you usually don’t have to cut back on horsepower. A great screen, fast performance, responsive software, and all-day battery life are all the things you can get in most of today’s bang-for-the-buck models. Many of these phones also come with a design and build that don’t give away its price tag and even turn a few heads.

In India, the story of affordable smartphones is a curious one. What started off in the late 2000s as the flood of cheap, plastic abominations under Indian and Chinese brand names, within few years evolved into a much-more refined game with even players like Micromax cleaning up their game and releasing surprisingly non-tacky phones and Chinese Apple-copycats releasing phones that give any high-end phones a run for the money.

This new generation of devices that firmly established low-price-high-quality handsets is marked in India arguably with the launch of Motorola Moto G. In a stunning comeback after the Moto name was all but lost since the age of the flip-phone, Motorola hit a home run with this seriously-affordable and handy smartphone. Featuring a sturdy build, clean design, peppy performance, a non-bloated edition of Android, this phone didn’t just set a benchmark for its price bracket prompting every phonemaker worth its salt to build better devices, but also decisively ended the debate that a really good smartphone only comes at a really high price.

As phone manufacturers scurried to beat the Moto G, they built things like the Asus Zenfone 5, Xolo Q1100, and the likes. Suddenly companies were cramming much better components and keeping the price as low as they could, spoiling the consumer for choices. 

But the second major game changer that came in to disrupt the scene was the Xiaomi Mi3 that took the market by storm. Although the Chinese company only sold a few thousand handsets due to shortage of stocks, they triggered quite an uproar loading unheard of specs in a phone that only cost Rs 14,000. For quite a while, no manufacturer could even come close to what this supposedly Apple-clone company with an unpronounceable name cooked up. Several technology pundits also lost hair trying to explain the economics behind the steal of a deal that it was.

For better or worse, the Xiaomi Mi3, also formally flagged off annoying the era of flash sales — that thing when a phone is sold out before you even get to hit the ‘buy now’ button — and today many companies resort to the same when giving away phones that are perhaps too good to be true.

But even as naysayers said (and keep saying) that this new ultra-economical breed of smartphones is unviable, many companies are proving them wrong with version two of their crown jewels. The Moto G Second Generation or the Xiaomi Mi4i all prove that, at least for now the exciting age of affordable smartphones is here to stay.