GSMArena smartphone buyer's guide: November 2014

Under €100

We have to admit it felt uneasy looking for under-€50 smartphones - those do exist, it's just that none of them is any good. If you really want to pinch pennies we'd recommend going the second-hand route, even a banged up proper smartphone will work better than €20-€30 device from eBay.

As for the rest, we'd strongly recommend forking over €10-€20 more to get KitKat out of the box. Android 4.4 has been optimized to run on low-power devices and there's a sliver of a chance that they may get one update - Lollipop.

Even if they don't (low-cost devices are not a priority update target), most Google apps and many third-party apps have been reskinned with Material design and a KitKat phone will feel current for another year or two. There are no compatibility issues with Jelly Bean, but again, KitKat works better on low power, 512MB devices like most of the handsets in the sub-€100 category.

Note that the phones here are roughly listed by price in ascending order.

We kick off with the LG L3 II - it's a fairly old device now but there are still units left over in stores. It's a 4.1 Jelly Bean device, but it's just about the cheapest workable smartphone we could find. The similarly-specced Samsung Galaxy Star enjoys a bigger popularity among our readers and is priced the same as the L3 II, but we think the LG is the smarter buy.

Here are a few quick tips for cheap devices. Look for an IPS display for the superior viewing angles, they have better viewing angles. Also, the Samsung records 320p@15fps video - unusable for anything other an MMS - while the LG L3 II captures 480p@30fps - not great but passable. It also has 3G (data plans are getting cheaper each year) and a bigger battery. Both phones have dual-SIM versions if you need the functionality.

Part of budget shopping is avoiding the badge markup - well-known manufacturers ask more for similar hardware. Sometimes it's worth it, but opposing brands have gone up in quality while staying low on price, to make up for the lack of brand recognition.

Not that Huawei is unheard of, it has been putting out some attention-grabbing phones like the Ascend P6 and the Mate7. But they also offer more modest and affordable devices such as the Huawei Ascend Y330. It features a bigger screen than the LG - a 4" FWVGA display that's twice as sharp (but it's not IPS). And it has more than double the processing power available with a dual-core 1.3GHz processor.

We mentioned that data plan prices are dropping but that's not true for some countries - there are regions that still pay out of the nose for data, or even simple voice calls and texts. Spreading out the three services (voice, text, data) over two different SIM cards sometimes presents an alluring price advantage.

While its name is youth-oriented, the Samsung Galaxy Young 2 makes for a fine budget device even if nobody has called you young for a while now. This chap runs Android 4.4 KitKat (one of the cheapest phones that do) on a single-core processor and is a dual-SIM phone. The screen isn't as good as the Ascend Y330's but it's still a bit bigger and sharper than the LG L3 II's.

The Sony Xperia E1 combines the screen and processor specs with Sony brand recognition and a KitKat update (initially launched with 4.3 Jelly Bean). The phone has a 4" WVGA screen with scratch-resistant glass, a Snapdragon 200 chipset and Sony's attractive design. There's an Xperia E1 dual, if you need an extra SIM slot.

Last time around we recommended the Lumia 520 over its replacing Lumia 530, but the Lumia 520 supply is running out and finding a good price is becoming increasingly difficult. Meanwhile a Nokia Lumia 530 Dual SIM can be had fairly cheaply - the cheapest quad-core phone with a recognizable brand name around.

The Lumia 530 Dual SIM has other advantages over the Xperia E1 too - like a 5MP still camera (still capped at 480p@30fps) plus free offline navigation. The Lumia 520 is single-SIM only but has an IPS screen and can record 720p video. It's dual-core Krait CPU is no slouch either, but again units are becoming scarce. It's still a good buy if you can find one.

The Samsung Galaxy Ace Style brings many improvements over the Young 2, enough to put it against the likes of Xperia E1 and Lumia 530. An advantage here is that its 5MP camera records 720p video. The phone itself runs Android 4.4 KitKat on a dual-core CPU. There's NFC too, which is finding its way on consumer devices to make pairing easier for things like Bluetooth speakers and headsets, although we hardly consider it essential.