Low-Priced Smartphones With High-End Features

If you're holding your breath for the iPhone 8 or the next flagship phone from Samsung, you might want to take a gander at the new, low-priced smartphones from Asus, Huawei, and other little-guy companies.
These phones and others being launched in 2017 cost $400 or less. Yet they serve up high-end technology, including wireless and rapid charging, ultrasharp displays, dual cameras, advanced virtual-reality experiences, and almost immortal batteries. You could pay more than twice that much for equivalent technology from the biggest brands. (There are some downsides to these low-priced smartphones—some have skimpy internal storage, for instance.)
With this kind of competition from low-priced smartphones, how long can Apple and Samsung get away with $900 models? That depends, according to Jitesh Ubrani, a senior research analyst for mobile technology at technology consultant IDC. “When it comes to their flagships, I doubt we’ll see any price reductions in the future,” he says.
But, Ubrani says, Android vendors such as Samsung face a lot of price pressure because users can easily switch brands without losing access to the Google ecosystem they already use. This means that in the future they might offer additional inexpensive models alongside their top-end phones.
iPhone users could be out of luck. “Apple continues to remain in a category of their own as their brand remains strong and fans remain loyal,” Ubrani says.
Consumer Reports will test these low-priced smartphones as they roll out in coming months before we can determine whether they live up to their promises. But if these devices perform as well as their makers claim, 2017 could be the best year ever to get cutting-edge technology at an affordable price.