What can you expect from a cheap mobile phone today?

Competition is fierce in the low-cost category, but it makes a difference what you spend. We show you what you can expect for a few tens of thousands of forints. 

Costing roughly forty thousand forints, the so-called entry category There is a huge interest in smartphones in our country too. Not without reason, because if you are clever, you can get an absolutely usable model for so little money. In this league, you can find products from several brands, and Xiaomi is one of the biggest names, which is not surprising. The Chinese company originally built its reputation on such low-cost, value-for-money handsets, and it continues to focus on this group to this day.

Several such devices are currently available for purchase in Hungary, for example Xiaomi Redmi 9AT which show what we can realistically expect from a device of this calibre today. This model is already based on an eight-core processor (MediaTek Helio G25), with 2 GB of DDR4 RAM and a dedicated graphics chip (PowerVR GE8320), and this hardware has enough power to make surfing the web, email, chatting, and basic everyday services smooth and fast enough. So even for a phone in this price range, there's no need to compromise. 

Storage capacity, screen

Storage capacity is also something to consider, as you shouldn't settle for 8GB or even 4GB of storage. For example, this device has 32 GB of internal memory for data storage, which means you can keep it running for a long time without worrying about whether there's enough room for pictures, videos, or larger apps or map files. 

Obviously, at that price, OLED displays are not an option, at least not today.

But you do expect the visual world to be normal, so that you can "look at" the phone. The Xiaomi Redmi 9AT, for example, has a 6.35-inch IPS LED LCD screen with 720 x 1600 pixels, which means it has a decent level of detail. It also has a surprisingly good contrast ratio, reaching 1500:1 in real life, which is something that many significantly more expensive devices can boast. And that's not even mentioning the 400-nit maximum brightness, which means it's bright enough to remain visible in sunlight. 

Battery and imaging

This phone also proves that you don't have to settle for little when it comes to energy management, as this phone has a 5000 mAh battery, for example, at a price of almost 40 000 HUF. And with this kind of battery, a device with this kind of hardware can last up to 12-14 hours on the souffle. 

Obviously, you can't expect miracles in imaging from a phone at this price point, but you can expect to be able to take decent pictures in good lighting conditions. Well, the Xiaomi Redmi 9AT, for example, is capable of this without any problems, as it has 13 megapixels,  It has a f/2.2 aperture rear camera for Full HD/60 fps video, and a 5 MP selfie camera. Not directly related here, but we should also mention the integrated FM tuner, which allows you to listen to the radio without an active internet connection, a useful extra for today.