I’m looking for the best value phone that offers the most bang for my buck. I remember coming across a website that ranked phones based on their rating/price ratio, which would be useful as a starting point, but I can’t recall which one it was. Could you please share your recommendations or point me to resources where I can find phones ranked by some sort of quality/value ratio, or just ranked by popularity, rating, price, etc? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
In case you want to recommend a phone, here are some of the specs I’m looking for:
Runs on Android OS version 11 or above, under $300, minimum of 8 CPU cores, minimum 6GB of RAM, minimum 64GB of internal memory, at least FHD display resolution, a display size of at least 6 inches, a display density of at least 390 pixels per inch, a primary camera with at least 40 megapixels, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a compass, GPS, USB-C, a battery capacity of at least 4000mAh, and availability of the phone in white or black colors.
Thank you in advance for your help!
How about Margot’s buying guide threads?
That’s why we made it, after all.
Got a 256 used pixel 7 for $400 six months ago. It probably goes near 300.
Why specifically 40+ Megapixels? I’d say the sensor in a phone is too small to really do anything significant with that many pixels.
But then again, super high-res cameras are the standard now either way, so moot point, I guess.
These sites helped me a lot when searching for a phone: Gsmarena phonearena versus
Anything running LineageOS. If you care for Security you are fucked, as only new Pixel phones have firmware updates and GrapheneOS support. And they are for 500€+ in my area, used.
Galaxy S21, around $200 used and is a really good phone because it was a high end flagship in 2021.
Meets all your wants aside from the headphone jack, but headphone jacks are pretty much only on cheap budget phones these days, and a USB-C adapter is cheap anyways.
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s21_5g-10626.php
One thing about searching on GSM Arena is the ‘Price’ filter seems to be based on the retail price, so by setting that to $300 you’ll filter out the good phones. Same with the headphone jack filter. Not sure on the color and notch filter, might be best to exclude those.
I believe Sony Xperia 10 hits all your requirements except camera MP.
The Xperia 10 III and 10 IV can be bought for under 300, they came out in 2021 and 2022 and can be upgraded to Android 13.
The V is about 350 and adds 48 MP camera and eSIM.
Edit: Or you can use the GSMArena phone finder to find what you need.
They are all the same nowadays (in their price categories). It falls down to what you’re used to and stick with it. The tech advance has plateaued and most manufacturers have caught up with each other. Only the branding adds or substracts the price.
