Best smartphones for every budget: Galaxy S8, OnePlus 3T, Moto G5 Plus and more
There have hardly ever been better days for smartphone buyers, especially if you are in the market for a flagship Android device. For consumers looking for a top-of-the-line phone, the market is flush with options that come with not only powerful hardware, but also looks to die for.
Compared to Apple's iOS platform, Google's Android operating system has a variety of great phones cutting across different budgets from manufacturers such as Samsung, Google and HTC.
Here are the best Android smartphones you can buy right now!
Samsung Galaxy S8, the flagship winner
The latest flagship from South Korean tech giant Samsung has been a fan favourite since its launch earlier in April 2017. The Galaxy S8 is easy on the eyes and packs powerful hardware under the hood. It won't be an exaggeration to say the smartphone is an enthusiast's dream. From the looks of it, the tech giant has left the battery woes of its previous flagship behind as numbers reveal the Galaxy S8 to have hit one million sales twice as quickly as its predecessors.
The Galaxy S8 comes to the table with a 5.8-inch 570 ppi display working at 2960x1440 resolution. The S8 also features a single-lens camera setup with a 12-Megapixel camera at the back. The aperture on the camera is rated at F1.7 and it boasts of autofocus and optical image stabilisation.
Depending on where you're buying it from, it comes packing an Exynos 8895 chip or the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal memory, which can be expanded using a microSD card. There's a 3,000mAh battery to complete the package.
One Plus 3T: Ultimate flagship killer
The OnePlus 3T was launched only a couple of months back. The phone remains great value for money at Rs 29,999. It carries forward its predecessors' legacy of being a flagship killer and comes packing high-end specs including a Full-HD AMOLED display, 6GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage and a 16-megapixel OIS camera.
Moto G5 Plus, the mid-range winner
The Moto G5 Plus is a very good phone for Rs 15,000. With a 5.2inch Full-HD display, a stripped-down stock Android 7.0 Nougat, and two variants (16GB and 32GB) with expandable memory (up to 256GB), Motorola's latest offering is a wonderful package. The model's cameras are decent — a 12MP rear camera with an aperture of f/1.7 and dual-pixel autofocus and a 5MP front camera. If you want to spend the money, this is your best bet.
Under Rs 10,000 budget phone conundrum
The smartphone market has gone through a phase of serious upheaval in the past few years, with the budget segment redefining itself every six months. Offerings from manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Vivo and Lenovo have shook up the under 10k budget smartphone segment like never before, making it the most fiercely contested battleground for smartphones.
However, for us, the fight for supremacy here is between two capable Xiaomi phones, the Redmi Note 4 and Redmi 4.
The successor to the hugely popular Redmi Note 3 is powered by the Snapdragon 625 SoC, which to be honest is a slight downgrade on the 652 SoC found in the previous variant of the phone. The phone also tries to woo new buyers with its mammoth 4,100mAh battery that powers the 5.5-inch 2.5D curved glass Full HD display on the phone.
On the other hand, the Redmi 4 brings with it a 5-inch IPS (1280x720 pixels) octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor, 2/3/GB RAM with 16/32GB storage depending on the variant of choice. It also comes packing a 13MP rear camera, 5MP front camera, 4G, VoLTE, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, IR blaster and fingerprint scanner — all of which is powered by a 4,100mAh battery.