This has been a breakthrough year for budget smartphones with some of them packing in flagship features, while maintaining the "affordable" price tag. The segment under Rs 10,000 grew even more competitive with a shorter refresh cycle.
While Xiaomi did well in the segment with Redmi 7A, 7, 8 and 8A, Samsung upped the ante with M30, M30s, M20, and M10.
Realme, which took the Indian budget smartphone market by a storm this year, recently said they they have shipped over eight million mobiles in less than one year and sold one million Realme C2 mobiles.
"In the coming year 2020, there will be a further strong intent on the part of the smartphone players to disrupt the budget segment. We expect the Rs 5,000-Rs 10,000 category will deliver a maximum contribution to smartphone sales in 2020 as well. Inevitably, the Rs 5,000-Rs 15,000 segment will become the most aggressively competed one with smartphone makers betting big with products offering premium features like quad-camera set-up with higher megapixels, bigger capacity batteries with fast charging and more," Arijeet Talapatra, CEO, Transsion India, told IANS.
Some of the budget smartphones that have captured the imagination of Indians this year are:
Redmi 7A: The Redmi 7A brings an overall upgrade over the Redmi 6A. It features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 chipset, a 4000mAh battery, a 12MP Sony IMX486 camera and a matte finish unibody and was launched at starting price of Rs 5,799.
The device comes with wireless FM Radio to allow access to radio without the need of earphones. It sports a 5.45-inch 18:9 HD+ display and supports expandable memory up to 256GB. The dual SIM, dual VoLTE device comes with a splash-proof design.
Samsung Galaxy M10: Samsung Galaxy M10 was launched in January 2019 at a starting price of Rs 7,990. The Galaxy M10 features a 6.2-inch HD+ Infinity-V display and is powered by an Exynos 7870 SoC.
For cameras, the device sports a 13MP primary rear sensor and a 5MP secondary sensor. For selfies, the Galaxy M10 comes with a 5MP front camera. It packs a massive 3,400mAh battery.
Realme C2: The device has dual-SIM (nano) slots and runs Android 9 Pie with ColorOS 6.0 on top and was launched at a starting price of Rs 5,999. The phone comes with a dual rear camera setup that includes a 13MP primary sensor along with a 2MP secondary sensor lens. There is also a 5MP selfie camera at the front.
It comes with a screen size of 6.1-inch HD+ (720x1560 pixels) and has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. It is powered by an octa-core MediaTek Helio P22 SoC, paired with 2GB and 3GB RAM options.
OPPO A5s: The OPPO A5s was launched at a starting price of Rs 9,990 in April. The device features a 6.2-inch LCD waterdrop screen with an aspect ratio of 19:9. The phone packs an 8MP front camera with F/2.0 aperture. At the rear is a 13MP+2MP dual camera system.
The device is powered by a robust 4,230mAh battery and has Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm optimisation to reduce power consumption. It runs the MediaTek Helio P35 chipset. The A5s comes in 2GB RAM+32GB ROM variant and 4GB RAM+64GB ROM version.
Vivo U20: Expanding its U-series in India, Vivo launched its U20 smartphone at a starting price of Rs 10,990. The device is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 and a 5,000mAh battery that comes with 18W fast charger inside the box.
The U20 sports a 6.53-inch FHD+ 'Halo Fullview Display' with a 90.3 per cent screen to body ratio. The device also comes with 16MP selfie camera and an AI triple camera setup at the back comprising 16MP+8MP+2MP sensors.
