BEST MOBILE PHONES UNDER 25000 IN INDIA

Vivo V17 is a good looking smartphone finished in a fancy paint job, At the front, it has a hole-punch selfie camera which makes it look modern. It has a 6.44-inch display with thin bezels on the sides. It also packs in a 4,500mAh battery but it isn’t very bulky at 176g. It sports a quad-camera setup at the back with a 48-megapixel primary shooter.

Powering the Vivo V17 is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 SoC which is relatively dated. It is paired with 8GB of RAM which makes multitasking easy. There is 128GB of storage which is plenty for an average user. The Vivo V17 runs Funtouch OS 9.2 on top of Android 9. There is a fair amount of bloatware on the device and we found that a few preinstalled apps pushed spammy notifications.

Battery life is good and the smartphone could last over a day easily. Camera performance of the Vivo V17 was very good in daylight but low-light photos had some noise. Night mode helps deliver a better shot. Low-light video recording is below average and could do with a few tweaks.

The Honor 20 sports an eye-catching design and has a very compact form factor, which makes it quite easy to hold the phone in palms, but the glossy rear panel is a fingerprint magnet. The side-mounted fingerprint sensor is extremely fast and does not pose any issue with its positioning either. The phone runs Magic UI 2.1 based on Android Pie and it is loaded with features, although it comes with a healthy amount of bloatware and has a learning curve to it. 

The 6.26-inch full-HD+ (1080x2340 pixels) All-View display renders vibrant colours and offers good viewing angles, but its temperature is slightly warm by default. Honor 20 is powered by the Kirin 980 SoC, which proves to be a capable performer in all scenarios, be it heavy multi-tasking or gaming. But the phone quickly gets hot while gaming, and the Honor 20's sound output is also not up to the mark either. 

Honor 20's quad rear cameras are led by a 48-megapixel sensor, which captures detailed photos with an ample amount of detail and sharpness, however, the colours are a bit oversaturated and there are some consistency issues as well. The selfie snapper gets its job done quite well, but not all people will like the smoothening done to the photos. The phone easily lasts a full day of usage, and its 3,750mAh battery can be fully charged, thanks to the bundled 22.5W fast charger. 

The Redmi K20's aesthetics are appealing and it stands out in a sea of other phones with a glass slab design and gaudy gradients. The 6.39-inch AMOLED display is of excellent quality, and the in-display fingerprint sensor is also quick.

The triple rear cameras deliver impressive results, and except for the underwhelming low-light performance and some other minor issues, the overall output is a cut above what the competition offers. The phone's battery life is also great, with the 4,000mAh unit easily making it past a day and more.

The Snapdragon 730 SoC powering this phone ensures a lag-free usage in even the most demanding situations and delivers a smooth gaming experience. A refined MIUI with fewer ads and features like a dark mode, app drawer, and ambient display are an added bonus on the software side. 

The Google Pixel 3a XL is an affordable alternative to the Pixel 3 XL. It is bigger in size than a Pixel 3a and promises the same Google Pixel experience at a relatively affordable price point of Rs. 44,999.

The Pixel 3a XL sports a 6-inch OLED display with full-HD+ resolution and an 18:9 aspect ratio. Thankfully, it does not have a huge notch which the Pixel 3 XL was criticised for. The display has three colour profiles which help change the output of the display. It has good viewing angles and punchy contrast. The Pixel 3a XL gets stereo speakers as well but these aren't front firing like the Pixel 3 XL. The stereo speakers produce a good output but sound tinny at full volume.

Compared to the Pixel 3a, the Pixel 3a XL is bigger in size and might not be very comfortable for everyone to use. Im terms of connectivity, it has a single Nano-SIM slot but offers dual-SIM functionality via an E-SIM. You can take full advantage of the E-SIM if your carrier supports this functionality. It also gets a 3.5mm headphone jack which has been missing on Pixel devices since the Pixel 2.

Google has opted for a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 SoC which is an octa-core chip. The Pixel 3a XL comes in one variant only, offering 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which isn't expandable. However, Google does offer unlimited photo storage at compressed resolution.

Being a Pixel smartphone, it runs stock Android Pie with some of Google's customisation on top. Pixel devices are known to get timely software and security updates. With the Pixel 3a XL Google promises 3 years of guaranteed software support. The smartphone offers a good user experience and we did not notice any lag or stutter during our usage.

The primary camera is a 12.2-megapixel Sony IMX363 sensor just like the Pixel 3. At the front, it has a single 8-megapixel selfie shooter. It gets most of the camera features of the Pixel 3 like Night Sight, Super Res Zoom and Playground. The camera performance is very good and the Pixel 3a XL manages to deliver crisp shots in most lighting conditions.

Google has equipped the Pixel 3a XL with a 3700mAh battery that helps it offer good battery life. The search giant also includes an 18W Type-C charger in the box that helps charge the Pixel 3a XL quickly. We could go on for over a day and a half once the Pixel 3a XL was fully charged.

For the launch price of Rs. 44,999 the Pixel 3a XL feels expensive for what it offers. Some of the competitors offer more powerful hardware for lower prices. But if you want the best camera performance under Rs. 50,000, the Pixel 3a XL delivers on that front.

The Samsung Galaxy A70 is being marketed as a multimedia powerhouse that can also deliver good photography results with its triple rear cameras and offer a smooth performance. The Samsung phone packs a beautiful 6.7-inch full-HD+ (1080x2400 pixels) Super AMOLED display which is vibrant, has good viewing angles and great sunlight legibility, making it a great choice for watching videos and playing games.

The phone runs Samsung's One UI based on Android Pie which has a modern design and comes with a host of useful features such as an always-on display mode and 'Face Widgets' to name a few. The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 675 processor paired with 6GB of RAM. The Galaxy A70 handles day-to-day tasks and gaming with ease, and the phone also does not heat up during intensive tasks. The Galaxy A70 also comes with Dolby Atmos support, but the in-display fingerprint sensor is a little slow at recognition.

The triple rear cameras help the Galaxy A70 capture crisp photos with good edge details and decent dynamic range. However, the camera struggles to reproduce true colours under harsh daylight and there is also some softening at the periphery. But the phone lacks EIS and OIS support, but the slow-mo videos turned out very smooth. The Galaxy A70 packs a 4,500mAh battery which easily lasts through a full day of heavy usage, while the bundled Super Fast Charging adapter takes the battery from 0-100 in less than two hours.