THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO…MID-RANGE PHONES

It’s getting harder to justify spending premium prices on premium smartphones – maybe your next buy should be something from the mid-range. So here’s what to look for

- David Nield

In relative terms, smartphones haven’t been around for very long at all really, if you count the arrival of the first iPhone in 2007 as a rough starting point. In nearly a decade and a half, screen sizes have almost doubled, handsets have become as powerful as some laptops, and battery life... well, battery life is still mostly average.

As the smartphone approaches its teenage years, there’s one trend that’s unmistakeable: the rise of the mid-range phone. More and more of us are opting for a phone that’s good enough rather than the best there is, and as a result we’re seeing more and more devices jostle for space in this particular value-for-money part of the market.

It’s not difficult to see the reasoning behind the shift. Phone components have become cheaper as well as more powerful, which means buying at the budget end of the market no longer means poor screens, sluggish performance and bad battery life. The top-end iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones still have an extra quality and premium edge to them – but is it worth paying twice as much for?

That’s the key question, and the majority of phone makers are now focusing on the mid-range market. Take a look at Google as one example: last year its affordable Pixel 3a was much more successful than the flagship Pixel 4, and this year the rumour is that the Pixel 5 won’t cost all that much more than the newly unveiled Pixel 4a. The Pixel 3a proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a good camera and a good software experience goes a long way, and Pixel phones are coming down in price as a result.

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