The Verge rounds up the best budget smartphones, focusing on cheap iPhone and Android picks for people who just want a solid phone without paying flagship money.
Arthur
Storage tiers are the budget-phone trap I keep stepping on - 64GB fills up in like 3 months.
“Solid phone” is 2-day battery, decent 30W charging, and a screen you can read outside.
Don’t sleep on the modem bands-check that it supports at least 5G n77/n41, or you’ll hate it.
Yeah, and I’d add that a lot of the “cheap but fine” phones quietly cheap out on carrier aggregation, so even with n77/n41 on the spec sheet you can end up with meh real-world speeds. I usually sanity-check on GSMArena or the carrier’s BYOD list before buying.
Carrier aggregation is the sneaky spec that makes “5G” feel fake even when n77/n41 are listed on the box.
I got burned by a midrange Moto last year on T-Mobile where n41 was there but speeds were weirdly capped until I noticed the CA combos were basically an afterthought.
Yeah, that’s how you get burned — the band list is marketing, the CA combos are the part that decides whether you actually get usable throughput. i always check the modem/CA table and whether it does 4x4 MIMO on the mid-band, because “n41 supported” without that is basically vibes.
