Motorola has packed a ton of premium features into its entry-level Moto G4 Plus smartphone. It comes packed with a 16 MP camera with laser auto focus; TurboPower, which gives you up to 6 hours of power in 15 minutes of charging; a large 5.5-inch HD display; and a fingerprint sensor on the front. It runs as quickly and smoothly as you could ever need, and its lightweight body makes it an ease to carry around.
Not to be left out of this burgeoning space, Apple introduced their iPhone SE as a cost-effective option to get into the iPhone family. You get the full Retina display treatment on its 4-inch screen, along with 4K video recording capability, ID fingerprint sensor, and the powerful A9 processor chip that was used in the iPhone 6. It may not feel like a budget smartphone when you have one in your hands.
Much like the Moto X Play in our premium smartphone roundup, it was tough to know where to place the Nexus 6P as it straddles the premium and budget smartphone categories. Thus, it becomes the high-end pick in this list. This new Nexus is larger than past generations of the phone, with its display measuring in at an impressive 5.7-inches. The octacore 810 processor delivers all the performance you need, also aided by the fact that Google doesn’t preload the phone with a lot of apps to ensure you get only what you want.
This is a great entry-level phone to get you into the smartphone game or to give to your 8th Grader who just want stop begging for one. Its quad-core processor and 1 GB of RAM is more than enough to deal with email, surf the web, get your latest photos up on Instragram and make sure you’re in touch with all your friends on Facebook Messenger. And its battery gives you up to 10 hours of talk time.
If having the latest and greatest doesn’t put a pep in your step, then grabbing the very capable Samsung Galaxy S6 might be a great bargain for you. The previous flagship for Samsung, replaced by the beloved Galaxy S7, is still a high-end phone that you can grab at an entry-level price. Metal and glass encase the S6, something that’s hard to come by in the category, and it comes with a speedy 64-bit octacore processor, 16 MP camera, 5.1-inch AMOLED display and many more goodies.
