I was in the market for two lower mid range phones (~30k) range and I did find a nice value in Samsung A24 so I bought it for one of my siblings at 28k (with a separate charger included). It’s a nice phone for the price. But I just couldn’t find the second phone that I wanted to buy for myself.
**My priorities: **
Basically these are the things I look for, in order, for a phone within my price bracket:
Main camera (OIS/EIS appreciated) > Selfie camera > Display type (Only AMOLED) > Storage type (Only UFS) > Chipset > Battery capacity and charging > Storage size (128 GB and above)> Speakers > RAM (4 GB and above) > Design and aesthetic > Other features and sensors (wifi/bluetooth adapter, proximity, gyro,..)
My only hard requirements are an AMOLED screen regardless of the refresh rate (60 Hz is fine if AMOLED, 120 Hz isn’t fine if IPS.), UFS storage, and storage. Stereo speakers would be nice but not a requirement.
**My budget**
25k – 35k. Not a strict budget. Am willing to be a bit flexible if there is a strong value proposition at play.
**Use Case**
Normal phone usage involves content consumption, connectivity, occasional picture-taking ( I’ll refrain from calling it photography), occasional video journaling, casual gaming, social media.
Should I just wait a couple of months? If there is no good device I may as well have to. But if you have something in mind, please do let me know.
Related:
my brother bought a new OnePlus nord ce2 for 35k. Most probably it was from grey market but it was a pretty good value. Tara aba MDMS implement bhaisakesi finding such deals seem pretty hard.
I bought a refurbished second hand iPhone X for 30K about 1 year ago and still working great, Probably the best decision I made since my last two Poco phone’s barely lasted a year.
Slightly older generation such as X, 11, 12 are bang for your buck if you buy them refurbished from good retailers, and its also easy to check an iPhone quality and validity when bought refurbished. You can get iPhone 11 for your budget which has really good camera even on low light.
Redmi 12 pro at 37K seems like the phone you’re looking for, note it has UFS 2.2 only.
Or wait for Redmi 13 pro.
Why not second hands?
🙄
samsung A24
I’d recommend getting a samsung a34 on EMI. 40% down payment so you’d get it for 18-20k and you’d have to pay less than 2k per month. It is objectively better than most phones at the the price range except for that fugly teardrop display notch.