Best Cheap Phones | Top 10 Low-Cost Smartphones 2019

What’s the best cheap phone you can buy?

Don’t want to splash out on a Galaxy Note 10? We’ve ranked all the latest and greatest affordable phones we’ve reviewed that are currently available to help you find the perfect smartphone for your budget and needs.

If you’re on the market for a cheap phone that won’t break the bank you’re in luck. The affordable phone market has come on leaps and bounds over the past few years. This is because, where in the past you could get a phone that was good, or cheap, never both, companies have made great strides bringing innovations in the top end down to the affordable market.

All the phones on the list, save a few special cases, are below £350. Scroll down to see our in-depth list, or if you’re in a rush check out our quick fire top 10 below.

1. Xiaomi Redmi Note 7

Pros:

• Impressive performance
• Long-lasting battery
• Great screen

Cons:

• Mono speaker
• Busy interface
• No NFC

If you want a killer camera and your budget is particularly tight, the Redmi Note 7 is astounding value for money. The phone is weighed down a touch by Xiaomi’s own MIUI 10 software but beyond that, this is an impressively well-rounded phone.

The star feature is its 48-megapixel primary camera (which comes supported by a 5-megapixel depth module) – it’s the same sensor as you’d find in everything from the Motorola One Vision to the OnePlus 7 Pro and while there’s no optical image stabilisation (OIS) to speak of here, as on more expensive handsets, it’s a superb snapper setup all the same.

The Redmi’s extended Full HD+ IPS screen doesn’t disappoint either, offering great colour reproduction, good viewing angles and decent legibility outdoors, not always a certainty with more budget-friendly phones.

2. Moto G7 Plus

Pros:

• Good cameras, front and back
• Solid value
• Classy hardware design

Cons:

• Deep notch
• Dynamic range and night shooting are not best-in-class

The Moto G7 Plus is the top dog in Motorola’s 2019 G-series lineup and is currently the best phone you’ll get for under £300.

For your money, you get a swish mixed metal and glass phone with a teardrop notch that looks and feels more expensive than most competing handsets this price.

Under-the-hood it has surprisingly good specs. The biggest highlight is the upgraded camera. The G7 Plus features dual rear sensor setup that combines a 16-megapixel main sensor with a 5-megapixel depth sensor.

With an improved f/1.7 aperture, larger 1.22µm pixel rate and OIS, on paper, this makes the G7 Plus’ rear snapper one of the best you’ll find on an affordable phone.

Other key specs include wonderfully fast Turbo Charging, a near untouched version of Android 9.0 and nippy Snapdragon 636 CPU that keeps things running smoothly.

3. Xiaomi Mi 9

Pros:

• Versatile camera
• Stunning value
• Fantastic performance
• Excellent screen

Cons:

• No IP rating

Normally, this list is comprised of phones under £350. We feel that’s a fair price and a value we’re happy to call ‘budget’. However, in the case of the Xiaomi Mi 9, we simply had to include it here as it’s such good value for money.

For the £499 price, you get a phone that would normally cost double that. Here you’ve got the latest Snapdragon 855 chipset, a 6.4-inch OLED display, three cameras including a 48-megapixel main sensor and fast wireless charging. You don’t get those kinds of specs with any other phone at this price.

Sure, there’s no water resistance and it’s packing in a flat screen, but the next best devices are at least £150 more expensive and up.

4. OnePlus 7

Pros:

• Oxygen OS user experience
• Top-notch performance
• Great battery life

Cons:

• Lacks the Pro’s camera versatility
• No wireless charging
• No water resistance

In the same vein as the Mi 9, OnePlus’ latest smartphone, the OnePlus 7, offers a similar amount of bang for your buck, albeit without some of the 9’s more advanced features. The OnePlus is really worth looking at against its launch sibling and beefier brother, the OnePlus 7 Pro. There’s a £150 price difference between the base model of each so it’s important to understand what the standard 7 losses and retains.

For starters, there’s a more modest 48-megapixel rear camera, accompanied by a 5-megapixel depth sensor, there’s slower 20W Fast Charging in place of the Pro’s 30W Warp Charge tech and the screen and design are much closer in nature to last year’s OnePlus 6T than the 7 Pro.

Despite all of this, however, it is still a powerful and worthwhile handset for 2019, with the latest Snapdragon 855, up to 8GB of RAM, solid battery life and OnePlus’ tried and tested Oxygen OS user experience.

5. Moto G7 Power

Battery life for days

Pros:

• Stunning battery life
• Robust performance
• Nice look and feel
• Superb value

Cons:

• Average camera
• Muffled voice calls

The Moto G7 Power represents incredible value for money. For £179 you’re getting a phone with one the longest-lasting batteries we’ve ever reviewed, along with a nice design and performance that won’t have you hankering for more oomph.

On the negative side of things, call quality is so-so and the camera is weak – so if you’re on a tight budget and you’d rather have a phone with a standout camera than a Herculean battery, you should check out the aforementioned Moto G7 Plus instead. At £269, it’s more expensive but still excellent value for under £300.

6. Honor 10 Lite

A lot of phone for under £200

Pros:

• Attractive design for the price
• Decent battery life
• Included case
• Feature rich

Cons:

• Heavy skinned software missing key features
• Prone to fingerprints
• Plastic build

If you’re looking for a capable phone that isn’t part of the Motorola family, Honor’s handsets would be our first port of call. The Honor 10 2018 flagship is a superb phone in its own right that can be had for under £400, but for half the price the Honor 10 Lite is also worth considering.

Boasting the latest version of Android Pie, topped with Honor’s own Emotion UI 9 overlay, the 10 Lite’s user experience is feature-packed, offering tons in the way of customisation, as well as AI-enhanced premium features like integrated retail image search through the phone’s HiVision tool; there’s even a headphone jack which helps grant the phone FM radio functionality.

As for those rear cameras, the dual 13/2-megapixel pairing takes usable shots in most conditions, with AI scene recognition for automated settings adjustment built in, plus there’s a dedicated Portrait mode, an impressive night mode and a rich suite of beauty tools for selfie lovers who decide to make use of the impressively crisp 24-megapixel front-facing camera.

7. Huawei P Smart 2019

Pros:

• Robust camera experience
• Feature-rich software
• Affordable

Cons:

• Poor earpiece speaker placement
• Fingerprint-prone plastic build
• microUSB is now dated

As the name implies, Huawei has revived its youth-centric P Smart series for 2019. Like the Honor 10 Lite, which launched just ahead of it, it boasts a Kirin 710 processor with AI smarts, a dual 13/2-megapixel primary camera with depth-sensing powers, a large 3400mAh battery with fast charging and an impressively low price tag of just £199.

Its “ceramic-like” finish is undoubtedly eye-catching if a little cheap to the touch, the latest Android software comes equipped with an impressive set of additional features, courtesy of Huawei, and the cameras boast a surprising amount of functionality, not to mention they’re capable of taking usable shots in low light. No mean feat for an affordable phone.

8. Vodafone Smart V10

Pros:

• Great battery life
• Usable camera
• Clean Android install

Cons:

• Underpowered

The Vodafone Smart V10 is one of, if not the, best phone you’ll find for £105. It’s the latest own-brand phone from Vodafone and it brings with it a few nifty features you’d normally only see on significantly more expensive blowers. Highlights include a near bezel free design with a tear-drop notch ala Huawei P30, a dual sensor rear camera that’s actually usable and all day battery life.

Add to this wonderfully clean install of Android 9 that’s blissfully free of bloatware and advanced parental controls to manage the sprog’s screen time and the V10 easily earns a place as one of 2019’s best affordable smartphones.

Gamers be warned though in a bid to keep its price so low Vodafone has had to cut a couple of corners. Some of these are fairly small – NFC, IP-certification etc. Others are a little more noticeable, like the 5.9-inch screen’s HD+ resolution and its slightly underpowered Snapdragon 429 CPU, which is a little to slow for intensive games like PUBG.

9. Xiaomi Mi A2

Pros: 

• Pure Android
• Dual cameras
• Strong performance for the price
• Good performance

Cons:

• Missing NFC
• Limited availability

The Xiaomi Mi A2 is one of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi’s latest budget handset, featuring a 5.99-inch IPS screen, a Snapdragon 660 CPU and 4GB of RAM, in addition to a 12-megapixel/20-megapixel dual-camera setup and 64GB of expandable (once again, via microSD) internal storage.

The software is great too, as it’s got a very clean version of Android with very few added extras in the form of Android One.

10. Pocophone F1

Pros:

• Excellent value for money
• Superb performance
• Fantastic battery life
• Decent cameras

Cons: 

• MIUI for Poco will take some getting used to
• Thick bezels
• Plastic build
• No NFC

The first phone from Xiaomi-affiliated startup Pocophone comes out the gate strutting. The company’s debut device, the Pocophone F1, has pulled the same trick as the original OnePlus One and 2018’s Honor Play.

An impressively crisp 6.12-inch Full HD+ screen, the same primary 12-megapixel camera as Xiaomi’s 2018 flagship, a huge 4000mAh battery, good for up to two days of use per charge and Qualcomm’s beefy Snapdragon 845 processor, backed up either 6GB or 8GB of RAM; this thing is feature-packed and capable enough to tango with some of the most powerful handsets from the last year, if raw performance is your metric of choice.

The best bit? While it’s usually already competitively priced at around £330, it’s often available at a discount – turning a great deal into a superb one.

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