Honour 6X
Honour managed to create an excellent budget smartphone last year (Honour 5X) so the 6X had a lot to live up to. Much of the improvements have come about from managing to pack middle/ upper range technology into a low end device. Unfortunately Honour has increased the price over last year’s model by £50 and it’s hard to see the justification. The battery will get you through the day, the build quality is much better than other phones
Price - £229
Key Features – Fingerprint scanner, dual sensor camera, Full HD display
Samsung Galaxy A5
Samsung has created a powerhouse mid-range phone here with an Exynos 7880 octa-core SoC processor and 3GB of RAM. It’s packed a microSD slot into the device which means you can crank the storage option up to 256GB if needed. The battery is only average but they have slapped the largest camera ever, on any Samsung, on the front which takes pictures at 16MP’s. Unfortunately the OS is running Android Marshmallow which is now looking quite dated.
Price – £399
Key Features – microSD slot, 16MP camera (front and back), powerhouse
ZTE Blade V8 Pro
Now entering the US market, ZTE is taking big leaps in the smartphone world. The new Blade V8 is all about getting great bang for your buck. The 5.5 inch display is full HD and it also comes with a dual SIM card try which also doubles up as a microSD card slot. Beware – this is a GSM phone only.
Price - £186
Key features – fingerprint sensor, big battery, 13MP camera
Blackberry Phone – unnamed
Blackberry, remember them? A new phone is coming from Blackberry this year which was unveiled at CES last month, although for some reason the name still remains a secret. We know nothing about the specs either! All we can tell you is that it will have a tactile keyboard like the Blackberry’s of old and will be running Android Nougat. Blackberry is focussing on the enterprise and government sectors and as such is promoting it’s end-to-end security as its major differentiator.
Price – unknown
Key Features – Nougat OS, tactile keyboard, strong enterprise software
LG K10
This new mid to low end device is packing 5.3-inch HD display, 1.5GHz octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, microSD slot, 13MP rear camera, 5MP front snapper and a removable 2,800mAh battery. They have also managed to include a finger print scanner and Android Nougat which comes with a removable LG overlay. It also has a microSD slot capable of taking a 2TB card which will be a big selling point for those with lots of media to store.
Price – unknown
Key features – huge microSD, Nougat OS, removable battery