GSMArena smartphone shopping guide: December 2013

€200-€300

The Moto G may've caused quite a stir, but the €200-€300 price bracket still remains the sweet spot for smartphones. The Moto G is not without its flaws and these phones correct them, without breaking the bank. Considering your phone will be with you for a couple years at least, the extra €100 spread out over the period isn't much if it will save you headaches or bring you more enjoyment. That means not having to delete files to make room, having a better camera or bigger screen, whatever fits your needs.

The Sony Xperia M dual is quite compact with its 4" screen and, as the name suggests, we're talking about the dual-SIM version of the Xperia M (the single-SIM version was overlooked, because it brings nothing interesting to the table). A 4" FWVGA (480 x 854) screen is no HD screen but is decent enough and the 5MP/720p camera is a match for the Moto G camera.

Throw in NFC, expandable storage and a removable battery and you have a serious competitor to the Motorola mass market phone. The M dual is within €10 of the Liquid E2 dual and while it's down in some specs, Sony has beautiful design on its side.

The Sony Xperia T has a 4.55" 720p screen, but what it has over the Moto G is a 13MP camera with 1080p video recording, expandable 16GB of storage, which could justify the small price premium. The screen viewing angles aren't great and the software updates will not be as quick (but Sony has a decent history of updating its phones).

The Sony Xperia C banks on people wanting a cheap phone with a large screen and dual-SIM connectivity. The screen has only qHD resolution, so it's nothing to rave about but the priority here is size rather than pixel density. The phone also has a quad-core Cortex-A7 based processor, 8MP/1080p camera, expandable storage and a beefy 2,390mAh battery.

The LG Optimus L9 II packs a 4.7" 720p screen and a dual-core Krait processor, with expandable storage, NFC and an IR blaster to sweeten the pot. The phone also measures 9mm thick, in case the 11.6mm of the Moto G are too much for you.

The Sony Xperia SP is very similar to the Optimus L9 II but with better graphics and LTE. Better yet, it's close to the Moto X, which unlike its Moto G sibling can be very hard to find outside the US. The 4.6" 720p screen is nice despite its low contrast and the dual-core Krait processor is paired with a powerful Adreno 320 GPU. There are no always-on voice functions, but Sony is already planning the Android 4.4 update and there's a microSD card slot. Oh, and this is the cheapest phone with LTE we're recommending too.

The Oppo R819 is one of our favorite phones from the up-and-coming maker and one of the few relatively high-end dual-SIM smartphones. It's delightfully thin at 7.3mm and has a good 4.7" 720p screen. The quad-core Cortex-A7 processor proved powerful enough and the 8MP camera with 1080p video capture is nothing to sneeze at. The storage is fixed at 16GB, which is the one major complaint we have about this phone.

The Huawei Ascend P6 is thinner still - it has a stunningly thin 6.2mm body and pleasant metallic back. Design is strong with this one, even if it takes the iPhone obsession a bit too far perhaps. It has a 4.7" 720p screen, Huawei's quad Cortex-A9 chipset and an 8MP camera with 1080p video capture. Despite the slender build, the P6 has a decent 2,000mAh Li-Po battery and even expandable storage.

The Huawei Ascend P6 can be a good introduction to Android for former iPhone users who want a bigger screen - it's thin, light, attractive, and made of good materials, plus the custom Emotion UI is highly customizable and iOS-like at its base. Better still, it's not a huge financial risk to try (it's well below even the iPhone 5C).

The Sony Xperia V is another alternative to the mini and the cheapest water-resistant phone that's worth your money. It obviously has that over the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini, plus a 13MP still camera, and a 4.3" 720p screen to match the HTC One mini. The expandable storage and LTE are nice touches too.

The Nokia Lumia 920 continues to drop in price and it's still a great deal. It's essentially a Lumia 1020 at half price, with the exception that you lose the massive 41MP sensor and some quality in the 1080p videos. It still has optical image stabilization though, the cheapest phone that does.

Apart from the camera, the specs of the Lumia 920 and 1020 are virtually identical and you'll get the same software. Yes, you do get an LCD rather than AMOLED, but it's among the better LCDs we've seen. The 920 may be bulky, but at least it doesn't have the camera hump on the back. Plus, the price difference between the two is big enough to buy a real camera - the Lumia 1020 is more than twice the price of the 920.

We mentioned minis several times before, time to meet the first one. The Samsung Galaxy S4 mini is one of the more compact smartphone offerings, as it's barely bigger than an iPhone 5s but manages to squeeze a 4.3" screen in. It has qHD resolution so it's not Retina-sharp, but it's a Super AMOLED, which has its share of fans.

The Snapdragon chipset with two Krait cores running at 1.7GHz with 1.5GB of RAM and Adreno 305 provides plenty of processing power for the class and the phone runs a fairly recent Android 4.2 version. The 8MP camera with 1080p video capture stacks up very well against similar cameras.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 mini comes in LTE and dual-SIM versions too, but those involve a price premium.

Speaking of Galaxy S phones, the Samsung Galaxy S III is still a good deal if you compare it to something like the Sony Xperia SP. It's fairly compact for its 4.8" Super AMOLED screen with 720p resolution and has a very good 8MP / 1080p camera.

The Exynos chipset with four Cortex-A9 CPU cores and Mali-400 is closer to the quad Cortex-A7 performance than a high-end Snapdragon, but is still good enough. It got updated to Android 4.3 recently too. The 2,100mAh battery is not huge by today's standards, but you'll get a decent run out of it. The 16GB of expandable storage gives you plenty of room for multimedia.

The €200-€300 bracket also brings the first phablet in this guide. We told you this is the sweet spot. The Huawei Ascend Mate has a big 6.1" screen of 720p resolution, a Huawei-made chipset (quad-core Cortex-A9) and runs Android 4.1, upgradeable to 4.2. The Mate has a huge battery - 4,050mAh - which performed great in our battery test.

The phablet also packs an 8MP camera with 1080p video capture and 8GB of expandable memory. Phablets are a growing segment that straddles the space between phones and 7" tablets and offer plenty of screen real estate for browsing, document editing and gaming along with impressive battery life.

The LG Optimus G is the former LG flagship and the basis for the Nexus 4. It resolves two of the more common complaints people had with the Nexus 4 by adding 32GB of built-in storage and LTE connectivity and you also get a better 13MP / 1080p camera.

You do, however, lose the pure Android version with timely updates. The Optimus G did recently get a 4.2 update and an official 4.4 build is on the way, which combined with its most recent drop in price make it a very compelling option.

This category used to hold the Nexus 4, but that's not such a great deal in places with no Play Store - the Moto G is quite close in terms of specs at a noticeably lower price, plus if you want a great Nexus experience you should save up for a Nexus 5. Though as you'll see in the next chapter, we're not recommending that one either.