GSMArena smartphone buyer's guide: 2017 July edition

Under €100

We always find it particularly tough to recommend anything at the very low-end of the smartphone market. Despite the ongoing efforts of manufacturers like Xiaomi and Meizu to constantly push the envelope, sub-€100 phones that can serve as a daily driver without filling you with red-hot rage at every interaction are rare.

Previously Microsoft's Windows Phone served the niche, as its lighter footprint made it more tolerable on the limited hardware that the phones here offer. But after that got effectively shut down, there was a rather bad transition period where this price group had virtually no good options. Some will surely scream Tizen here, but that's a platform with very limited availability so it's not really an option for most people.

Either way, that time is now gone as decent chipsets and screens have become cheap enough to fit within the budget. Options are still relatively few and they are hardly ideal, but if you really can't bump your budget at all they'll do the job.

The Xiaomi Redmi 4a is one. Naturally, it sports an all-plastic build, although it's complete with a pretty convincing metal-like finish. Its 5-inch LCD isn't particularly bright or spectacular outdoors, but it does come with HD resolution, which is something you should definitely strive for even in the low-end in 2017. Plus, you get the added bonus of some unspecified Gorilla Glass protection for the screen.

Something you can't realistically expect in the sub-€100 range is a powerful CPU. But MIUI 8 still runs decently and most games will scale down to run smoothly enough to be playable - they just won't look very pretty.

An adequate camera combo rounds things up and the IR blaster is a nice little treat- and an increasingly rare one as well.

Of course, there's always another concern when in comes to Xiaomi and other Chinese manufacturers - support and availability. If you can't get the Redmi 4a where you currently live, the Lenovo Vibe C2 (or simply Lenovo C2 in some markets) might be an alternative.

You still get a 720p screen resolution and four Cortex-A53 cores of admittedly rather low clock speed. Opting for the more widely available Lenovo, also leaves you with a slightly downgraded camera and battery and only 8GB of built-in storage. The latter can turn into a major problem if you plan on running anything more than a handful of apps. At least you get a memory card slot for storing your images and videos.

Honorable mentions in this price bracket include the LG K4 and Alcatel One Touch POP Star 4G. Just be advised that both run on Lollipop and are quite unlikely to even get any major Android update. The LG also only get 480 x 854 pixels on its 4.5-inch panel. It is compact though, we'll give it that.

As you can see, it's slim pickings in this price range, but still more than we had three months ago. Still, if you can up your budget just a little we would advise you to do so. On the next page we have several great value options lined up.