If there’s one thing that sells anytime of the year, it’s a mobile phone. However, during the festive season, you can really see mobiles fly off the shelves what with all the Diwali offers. There’s no better time for the budget buyer to grab a smartphone too, you can get yourself a pretty good smartphone without breaking the bank. The market is flooded with smartphones, so if you’re looking for the best smartphones under 15000 rupees, you’ve come to the right place! Manufacturers have finally understood that economical smartphones really move some units, so some of the biggest names in the game have launched smartphones for the budget buyer. Here’s our top picks for this season, arranged by lowest to highest price.
First up is our very own desi Karbonn A21. Even though it’s the least expensive on our list of the best smartphones under 15000 rupees, it sure packs a punch. In fact, it has some of the best hardware this side of 15 grand. Packing in a Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 SoC, a 1.2 GHz dual core Scorpion processor and 512 MB of RAM, the Karbonn A21 is almost as powerful as the much more expensive HTC Desire X and actually uses the same SoC. It’s got a pretty good 4.5 inch screen, and a decent 5 MP rear facing camera along with a front facing 0.3 MP camera. There’s also expandable memory upto 32 GB and a fairly large 1800 mAh battery. In terms of value for money, the Karbonn A21 is an absolute steal.
Price: Rs. 10,790
Our second Indian entry in the list is the Micromax Canvas 2 A110. This is probably the cheapest “phablet” you can get, it packs in a huge 5 inch LCD screen, a dual core 1 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM and expandable memory upto 32 GB (2 GB internal). Rounding it off is an 8 MP rear facing and 0.3 MP front facing camera. The 2000 mAh battery ensures that the Canvas 2 keeps going on and on. The slight downside is that even though the screen is large, the resolution is still WVGA, so the pixel density isn’t too much to write home about. Otherwise, what other “phablet” can you get for this price?
Price: Rs. 10,990
The Sony Xperia U is another addition to the already bafflingly huge Sony smartphone lineup. You are definitely going to get confused about the number of phones Sony has on offer. However, the Sony Xperia U stands out for being a solid, good looking device with great specs for the price. Inside you will find a STE-U8500 SoC with a 1 GHz dual core processor, 512 MB of RAM and Mali-400MP GPU. There’s a colored strip just below the screen that lights up according to your preference or the background, and will appeal to those with a funkier fashion sense. There’s a pretty good 5 MP rear facing camera and a 0.3 MP front facing camera for video calling. The only downside is that there’s only 8 GB of internal memory, which is non expandable. On the whole, a good buy if you’re not too concerned with cramming movies and music in your phone.
Price: Rs. 13,500
Yes, we know the One V costs around Rs. 17,000 or so, but a lot of online retailers and specially eBay deals has it for under Rs. 15000. In terms of specs there’s not much to boast about here, there’s a 1 GHz single core processor, 512 MB of RAM and a 1500 mAh battery. But looking past that, the HTC One V has fantastic build quality, comes with HTC’s own UI called HTC Sense 4.0 and is the cheapest phone with the Beats Audio enhancement. It’s got a premium feel to it and in most situations you won’t really miss the lack of processing power. The 3.7 inch Super LCD2 screen is also great to look at, and you can even expand the memory upto 32 GB (4 GB internal).
Price: Rs. 14,990
If Android isn’t your thing, look no further than the Nokia Lumia 710. It runs Windows Phone 7.5, soon to be upgraded to Windows Phone 7.8 which will bring some new features of Windows Phone 8 to it. It has basically the same internals as the Nokia Lumia 800, and while on paper it doesn’t seem like much, the Lumia 710 does not slow down and zips through the Windows Phone 7.5 interface. There’s a 1.4 GHz Scorpion processor, 512 MB RAM and a great 3.7 inch LCD screen with Nokia’s ClearBlack technology. The downsides, other than the rather obvious one of not being able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8, are the non expandable 8 GB of storage and single 5 MP rear facing camera. But this Diwali, Nokia is offering a Nokia Stereo Bluetooth headset for free as well, so that’s a pretty good deal that makes it a worthy contender among the best smartphones under 15000 rupees.
Price: Rs. 14,999
All the Android phones above run on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and all of them are 3G capable. That about wraps up our feature on the 5 best smartphones under 15000 rupees for this Diwali! Do let us know if there’s something we missed or if there’s another phone you think that deserves to be on this list. Until next time!
