Best Cheap Non-Chinese Smartphone Alternative

Technology Feb 12, 2021

Happy new year to everyone. Had a hard time picking what to eat today with so much food on the table for the new year. Hope our next new years will be better, but I am still very happy to spend it with my family, and later with many of my friends online.

So, our article for today is about the best affordable alternative to cheap Chinese smartphones. I think there's a huge market out there looking for good alternatives to powerful low cost Chinese smartphones. We have India after multiple border clashes, and people in many Southeast Asian nations because of territorial disputes, and many more.

There are a few alternatives I think, depending also where you are from, but the hardware I think that comes with Chinese smartphones, like Xiaomi, is really hard to beat with the price tags they come with. It's just really cheap, especially with the numbers it gives you, but we always fail to see the software side. Chinese smartphones' software in my opinion is pretty bloated, including a top brand like Xiaomi. I'm not going to talk about Oppo, Vivo or Realme here, anything from BBK Electronics, as I think their quality, hardware and software, is far behind Xiaomi's, even though they come from the same factories I think. Chinese smartphones almost always comes with software that you don't need and some would argue is a threat, whether it be privacy or just an extra attack surface for hackers to take advantage of, or would just slowdown your phone by taking up extra resources. Many times I think, a good software beats a slightly bad hardware.

If there's one company in the world that beats everyone in software, I think that's Google, but Pixel phones, Android phones actually sold by Google, are expensive, especially to low income households in third world countries who needs to have a smartphone but doesn't have much to spend, and that's where Android One comes in. Android One is originally created, I think, by Google for faster Android updates, having minimal modifications to how Google, the company that develops Android, designed it, it is the closest for a non-Pixel phone to work how Google wants a phone to look like and function, but it also created a family of smartphones with Pixel-like software without the Pixel-like price tag. Android One is not exclusive to lowrange and midrange smartphones but why buy Android One phones if you can buy the one sold by Google itself.

Now, my recommendation is no other than Nokia. Nokia has introduced smartphones with very affordable prices from lowrange to midrange. Nokia's phones being on the Android One project assures near Android experience to what Google intended Android to be, unlike Samsung which is another contender I think on being a good alternative to Chinese smartphones. I think Samsung is great, especially their hardware, but they are just not as good in my opinion in the lowrange and midrange sector, with their One UI being a better option for high-end phones in my opinion. I think the software, being Pixel-like in Nokia phones, makes up for the slightly lower specs than what Xiaomi smartphones offer. The quality, or should I say reliability of the hardware, in my opinion, is also quite great, maybe because of their partnership with Foxconn, the company known for manufacturing iPhones, and with Nokia's world-class quality control.