Best smartphones for all budgets to brighten up Diwali

We don’t really need an excuse to shop, but it’s nice to have one anyways. Festivals are one of those excuses we use to buy ourselves shiny new gadgets, and Diwali is one of the big ones. Smartphones are high on everybody’s shopping list this time of the year, along with clothes and gold. In order to make your life easier, we at Tech2 have racked our brains to come up with some of the best bang-for-buck smartphones you can buy in the martket.

To simplify this, we’ve broken it down into three major price segments so that it’s easy for you to pick and choose. Remember, these are our personal recommendations and since we only picked two in each category, we’ve had to let some of the good ones go in some segments. We start off with the most popular category and that’s the one under Rs.10,000.

Samsung Galaxy Pocket – Rs. 6,800
If you are on a shoestring budget, then the Samsung Galaxy Pocket is your best bet. A better performer than the Galaxy Y, the Pocket features a faster CPU, so the UI is a lot quicker. The handset is built well and the plastic construction feels sturdy to hold. You also get Wi-Fi and expandable memory support, which gives it really good value.

For those on a budget

• 2.8-inch TFT display with a 240 x 320 pixel resolution
• 3G, EDGE, Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth with A2DP, USB 2.0
• GPS with A-GPS Support
• 2MP camera with QVGA video recording
• 3GB internal memory, expandable via microSD card slot

Sony Xperia tipo – Rs. 9,500
The Xperia tipo brushes past the former champion, the HTC Explorer, as the best value smartphone in this budget. The tipo is powered by a snappy 800MHz CPU and runs Android ICS. It also happens to be very well built, is small and compact and has a pretty decent battery life. This makes it a perfect choice if you’re shopping with a tight budget.

Great value under 10K

• 3.2-inch TFT display with a 320 x 480 pixel resolution
• 3G, EDGE, Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth with A2DP, USB 2.0
• GPS with A-GPS Support
• 3.2MP camera with VGA video recording
• 3GB internal memory, expandable via microSD card slot