7 best cheap phones that prove budget smartphones aren’t rubbish

The latest phones from Apple, Samsung and Google tend to grab all the headlines, but it’s at the cheaper end of the smartphone market where competition is most fierce. It’s also where you’ll find the best deals.

Choosing the right budget Android or iPhone depends on how much you’re willing to spend and which features you can live without. You might not need a fancy camera or a pin-sharp 120Hz display, or you might just want a basic phone with giant battery life for calls and texts.

Everyone’s definition of a cheap smartphone is different, so manufacturers produce a wide range of devices to suit most needs and budgets. Samsung makes excellent cheap phones for its A-series, while brands such as Xiaomi manage to cram impressive specs and performance into phones costing less than £200.

Apple, Samsung and Google have even started to offer budget-friendly versions of their top-selling devices. The cheapest iPhone is still more expensive than most cheap phones, but it marks the tech giant’s move towards giving users a more affordable alternative to the latest and greatest iPhone.

Because they use less powerful processors, many cheap phones have better battery life than more expensive devices, meaning you can often squeeze days of use out of a single charge. That makes cheap phones an ideal option for hiking, camping and travelling to places where you might not want to carry an expensive piece of technology in your pocket.

How we tested

A selection of the phones we tested for this article. Pictured: the Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 and Poco X7 Pro (The Independent)We tested each of the best cheap phones by swapping it out for our normal device and using it as we usually would our regular phone. We paid close attention to how the cheap phones coped with tasks such as messaging, listening to music and podcasts, and churning through social media feeds. We tested each phone’s camera in daylight and at night, and ran high-performance apps such as mobile games, to stress the CPU and test for slowdown and lag.

Why you can trust us

IndyBest thoroughly tests every product we feature to bring you unbiased reviews based on real-world testing, and we only recommend products we think you’ll love. Steve Hogarty is a technology journalist with more than a decade of experience reporting on and reviewing smartphones. His tests are designed to measure each phone’s performance in a wide range of situations and locations, from everyday use to more intensive tasks like gaming and video rendering.

The best cheap phones for 2025 are:

Best cheap phone overall – Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro 5G: £299, Amazon.co.ukBest cheap Samsung phone – Samsung Galaxy A55: £339, Currys.co.ukBest cheap Pixel phone – Google Pixel 8a: £349, Amazon.co.uk