Weekly deals: the best smartphone deals from the UK, Germany, the US and India

Patience is a virtue – and savings too as smartphones both old and new have been slowly going down the price ladder. Also, this week there are a few bundles that include a free laptop, a free game or just a gift card. Use the links below to jump to your region.

• The UK
• Germany
• USA
• India

UK

The base Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (256GB storage) is £1,250 on Samsung.com. It costs that much on Amazon too, but the retailer will include a Galaxy Chromebook Go for free. This is as basic as it gets, an 11.6” laptop with an Intel Celeron N4500 (2 cores, 1.1GHz base, 2.8GHz boost), 4GB of RAM and 64GB eMMC storage. It won’t blow your socks off, but it’s good enough for schoolwork.

A few weeks ago, the Pixel 7 Pro was down to £685, but the price isn’t stable and often goes up to the 700+ quid range. Right now it’s just below that mark.

An old iPhone 13 can be had for £700, though for just £70 more you can have the newer iPhone 14 instead. It’s not a massive upgrade, but you do get more graphical power, 2GB RAM more and a few other improvements, so we think that small premium is worth it.

If you wanted a large iPhone but never wanted to pay Pro Max money, the iPhone 14 Plus may be for you. It’s £100 more than the vanilla model, but there is no equivalent iPhone 13 series model, so there is no cheaper option as an alternative.

The PlayStation 5/God of War Ragnarok bundle is on offer with a small discount. You can have the disc version or the digital version of the console, the difference between them is £90. Either way, the game is a digital download.

Germany

The Xiaomi 13 Pro launched with a steep MSRP of €1,300, now the price is starting to fall. It’s only down around €67, but it’s a start.

The Nothing Phone (1) is one of the finer mid-rangers of last year, though it’s starting to get long in the tooth. On the plus side, its price is falling too and you can have one for under €400.

The Samsung Galaxy A54 on the other hand is brand new. While its price is technically still €490, you can collect a €75 voucher on Amazon to bring the actual price down to more palatable levels. Note that the same voucher is available for the 256GB model as well.

The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ hasn’t gotten a discount yet, so it costs the full €500. If you can live without the 200MP main camera and 120W charging, the Redmi Note 12 Pro offer from last week is still on the table.

Moving on to lower cost devices, there is the Galaxy M23. It has a large 6.6” 120Hz LCD with FHD+ resolution, plus a large 5,000mAh battery with 25W charging. It has a 3.5mm jack and a microSD card. There isn’t much to get excited about, but we can’t fault the phone either.

The Poco M5 and M5s are both €30 off. The s-variant is pricier as it comes with an AMOLED display (6.43” 60Hz) instead of an IPS LCD (6.58” 90Hz). It has a 64MP camera capable of 4K video (vs. 50MP 1080p cam), plus an 8MP ultra wide module (vs. none). Also, the 5,000mAh battery is faster to charge at 33W (vs. 18W). Those upgrades are worth the extra €30 if you ask us.

Going even further down, the Realme Narzo 50A Prime has a 6.6” FHD+ 120Hz display to rival the Poco M5. And its Unisoc T612 chipset packs a pair of A75 cores, even though all A53 CPUs aren’t uncommon in this price range. With a 50MP main (and no ultra wide) camera, plus a 5,000mAh battery with 18W charging, it’s worth comparing to the Poco.

Summer is here (in the northern hemisphere, at least), so you may be planning a vacation. A pair of comfy noise canceling headphones will make the trip more pleasant, so you may want to check out the Bose QuietComfort SE.

USA

The Samsung Galaxy A54 started shipping on April 6 with an MSRP of $450. You can still get up to $250 in trade-in credit on Samsung.com, but if you have nothing to trade, you may want to go through Amazon instead – the retailer will give you a $50 gift card.

Amazon tablets are on sale and you can have the Fire HD 10 for $90. This is the 2021 model so it comes with an octa-core CPU, 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage, but the real reason to buy this tablet is the 10.1” 1080p display and support for all the streaming services. It has stereo speakers and up to 12 hours of battery life to boot, so it’s a cheap, portable entertainment machine.

The Fire 7 Kids tablet is down to $60. The main selling point here is the thick, durable shell that the slate comes with that allows it to survive playtime. Also, there are no ads (unlike other Fire tablets you don’t have to pay to remove them) and there are parental controls, age-based filters and so on.

If you’re on the lookout for a smartwatch, but want something rugged and with long battery life, check out the Garmin Instinct. Note that this is the original model rather than the Instinct 2. It offers up to 14 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and up to 16 hours with GPS tracking (40 hours in Ultratrac mode). If you want more, there is also the version with a solar panel, which extends the battery life if you spend a few hours a day out in the sun.

Apple recently cut orders for M2 chips as laptop demand sagged. We’ve seen comments from people who are happy with their M1 machines and have no reason to upgrade, so that may be part of the reason why. Speaking of, you can get an M1 MacBook Air (8/256GB) with a $200 discount (it’s $1,000 on Apple.com).

Nvidia just announced the GeForce RTX 4070, a $600 GPU that is comparable to the old RTX 3080. However, instead of this GPU you can get a PlayStation 5 disc edition with God of War Ragnarok and still have $90 left over for other games. A year of PlayStation Plus Extra is worth $100, so that is an option as well.

India

The iQOO Neo 7 has been around since early March and its price hasn’t budged from the ₹30,000 point. That said, it’s still hard to get a Dimensity 8200 at this price point, e.g. the vivo V27 Pro (8/128GB) is ₹37,000. The chipset promises to handle 90 fps gaming on the large 6.78” FHD+ display (which has a native refresh rate of 120Hz) and the large 5,000mAh battery needs only 25 minutes to fully recharge using the 120W adapter (10 minutes to 50%).

The Redmi Note 12 is a 5G phone (with a Snapdragon 4 Gen 1) for around ₹20,000. The 4/128GB model is below that, the 6/128GB one costs exactly that much (both with a ₹2,000 discount). The phone boasts a 6.67” 120Hz AMOLED display, 48+8+2MP camera, 5,000mAh battery with 33W charging, expandable storage and a 3.5mm jack.

The Samsung Galaxy M14 will launch in India next week, pre-orders will open on Monday. Samsung is keeping the exact price under wraps, but it will be under ₹14,000.

However, last year’s model is still around. That Exynos 850 isn’t ideal (it’s certainly not as good as the 1330 in the new one), but the phones are similar enough other than that and the Galaxy M13 in under ₹10,000.

The Realme Narzo 50i Prime and Redmi 12C are a pair of sub-₹10,000 phones. Since both have HD+ screens, they are no match for the M13. The Redmi’s higher price isn’t worth it, but the Narzo is a fine cheap option with a large 5,000mAh battery, expandable storage and a headphone jack. The Redmi has those things too, plus a 50MP main camera (instead of 8MP), but that’s not worth the extra ₹2,000.

The OnePlus Nord Buds 2 went on sale this Tuesday. The buds add ANC over the original model, though if you check out our review, you will be disappointed to find out it’s pretty bad. Still, these are on the cheaper side of TWS buds.