Cheap and smart

Some of the budget smartphones from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

Nokia Lumia 520 (Windows Phone 8)

The Lumia 520 is the best budget smartphone the world has ever seen. This wonderful smartphone has everything going for it. The beautiful design of the Lumia line of products comes in yellow, cyan, red, white and black. Wonderful specs like the 4-inch WVGA IPS LCD display with a resolution of 800x480 made of 2D hardened glass boast of super sensitive touch, 512MB of RAM, a 1-GHz dual-core Snapdragon CPU, a huge 1,430mAh battery and 8GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 64GB using a microSD card. On the back you will find a 5-megapixel camera capable of recording 720p video that makes use of lenses like panorama and cinemagraph. Along with the latest Windows Phone 8 operating system it also boasts of the full suite of the Nokia apps like Here maps and Nokia music. And at a price of approximately Rs 9,000 it is a bargain.

Alcatel One Touch Fire (Firefox OS)

Riding on its immensely popular Firefox browser, Mozilla is launching the new Firefox operating system, and to showcase that it is launching Open by ZTE and the One Touch Fire by Alcatel. The One Touch Fire is a very attractive phone with a glossy plastic body that comes in pink and orange colours. Behind the 3.5-inch HVGA TN display it packs a 1GHz processor, 256MB of RAM, 512MB of storage that can be expanded up to 32GB using a microSD card. There is a 3.2-megapixel battery on the back. If you want to go beyond the monopoly of Android, monotony of iOS and the meekness of Windows Phone you need to try this phone and its OS with HTML 5 web apps.

Acer Liquid Z2 (Android 4.1 Jelly Bean)

Acer’s Liquid Z2 is an entry level smartphone. On the face of it, it is a very unremarkable smartphone. It runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, has a small 3.5-inch screen of 480x320 resolution, and packs a 1GHz processor. On the back you will find a 3-megapixel shooter. You can choose between both black and white colours and can pick either single SIM or dual-SIM varieties. What makes the Z2 a little bit special is that Acer wants to ease the transition of first time smartphone users with an app launcher that simplifies the Android interface.

Fujitsu Stylistic S01 (Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich)

The Stylistic S01 is specifically made for older people who find modern smartphones daunting. It runs on Android Ice Cream Sandwich which has been highly modified so as to have large buttons which make it easy to use. It is specifically made to avoid accidental app launches. The waterproof phone also has an emergency button on the back which sends off text messages to pre-defined numbers when activated. It has a four-inch screen, along with an 8.1-megapixel back camera with dedicated camera buttons.