GSMArena smartphone shopping guide: December 2013

Under €100

Last time around, there were a few feature phones that made the cut for people on a shoe-string budget, but the cheapest smartphone is currently at €40 - and it's an LG rather than a no-brand to boot. There's still a sliver of market share for feature phones as dual-SIM smartphones are pricier than basic, dual-SIM feature phones. But again, there's nothing to recommend there, just grab the first one that's within your budget.

Dual-SIM phones are still very popular in markets where carriers keep prices high and the sub-€100 category will be of interest to people in those locations. Lucky for them, Android's support for dual-SIM (unlike WP8) and drive to reduce prices have resulted in phones with very agreeable prices. We just want to remind you that we've excluded regional brands.

The first phone is the LG Optimus L3. It didn't make the cut last time, the cheapest smartphone on offer was the Samsung Galaxy Y, but a big price drop for the L3 earns it the privilege of being the first phone we recommend in this edition of our shopping guide. It's also the phone that lead us to discard the feature phones - it's cheaper than a touchscreen Nokia Asha but you get better hardware.

The LG Optimus L3 launched early last year and while its specs are unimpressive, it's a perfectly adequate package. It runs Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread on an 800MHz processor with 384MB RAM. The 3.2" QVGA (240 x 320) touchscreen isn't a top pick either. What it has going for it is a 3.15MP camera capable of VGA @ 24fps video capture, expandable storage and a decent 1,500mAh battery. That's enough to handle music player and IM/Facebook duties. It will also do voice-guided navigation with Google Maps Drive in a pinch.

Feature phones will never get Snapchat or the next craze in messaging and they don't have GPS navigation. If you've never had a smartphone, something like the Optimus L3 can open your eyes to new uses for your phone, without a big investment.

Next up, the Nokia Lumia 520 is making a comeback. It is the cheapest phone you can buy with a 4" WVGA (480 x 800) screen and dual-core Krait. It's also the only phone with a decent 5MP/720p camera in this price bracket. Add free offline navigation for one country, free Nokia Mix Radio streaming (with offline buffering) and free Office suite, and you get the perfect budget phone for people on the go.

Note that in the US, the Lumia 520 can be had dirt cheap from the Microsoft store (off contract but locked to AT&T). It's pricier in Europe, but a recent price drop moved it from the €100- €200 bracket to the sub- €100 category.

The Alcatel One Touch T'Pop is not much more expensive than an Optimus L3, but offers tangible improvements - and some drawbacks, unfortunately. The major plus is the bigger 3.5" screen with double the resolution (HVGA, 320 x 480, like all pre-4 iPhones). It also has a slightly faster CPU, but only 256MB RAM. The camera is either 2MP or 3.2MP depending on the region and there's a microSD card. Again, the key gain here is the better screen.

Its cousin, the Alcatel One Touch S'Pop is the first dual-SIM phone on our list and, while it's similar to the T'Pop in some respects, it's actually a much better device. It keeps the 3.5" HVGA screen and 1GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, but has 512MB of RAM, runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (a reasonably recent OS) and the camera is fixed at 3.15MP with VGA video capture.

The more up-to-date software version brings better app compatibility, which is very important if you plan to keep the phone for over two years (Gingerbread market share is shrinking and with that, the incentive for devs to support it).

Then comes a third member of the Alcatel One Touch family, the M'Pop. It bears many similarities to the Lumia 520 with one key difference - the chipset is much weaker (single-core Cortex-A9 CPU, PowerVR SGX531, basically an iPhone 3GS grade chipset). The upside is a decent 4" WVGA (480 x 800) display, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and 5MP camera capable of 720p video capture. Keep in mind you don't get free SatNav, the chipset is lower grade and it only has 4GB of built-in storage rather than 8GB (there's a microSD card slot though.

Usually we'd go with the Lumia for that Snapdragon chipset and free navigation, but Android offers a lot of opportunity for tinkering, if you're into that.