BEST MOBILE PHONES UNDER 7000 IN INDIA

The Redmi 7A brings numerous meaningful upgrades over its predecessor and offers great value for its price. The 5.45-inch HD+ display is of decent quality, but its brightness is not up to the mark. The phone has a solid build quality and the promised 2-year warranty is an added bonus.

Day-to-day performance is also good for a phone in the entry-level segment, but it stutters with heavy multi-tasking. Redmi 7A captures vibrant photos in daylight, but the low-light photos and selfies have a grainy texture. The front camera also changes the skin complexion without even applying the beautification filters.

The 4,000mAh battery easily lasts for over a day and takes a little over 2 hours to charge fully with the supplied 10W charger. The Redmi 7A is a noteworthy upgrade over its predecessor, but the Realme C2 offers more with its appealing design, larger display, and dual rear cameras.

The Infinix Smart 3 Plus is one of the most affordable phones to offer triple rear cameras, pairing it with an appealing design and an all-day battery life. The Infinix phone has premium-looking aesthetics and features a 6.21-inch HD+ (720x1520 pixels) display that renders vibrant colours and has decent viewing angles, but it is quite reflective in nature.

The phone is powered by the MediaTek Helio A22 processor paired with 2GB of RAM, but the combination is not powerful enough. The phone struggles with handling heavy apps and multitasking, and the gaming performance also leaves a lot to be desired. The face unlock feature on the phone also struggles and is quite slow at recognition.

Daylight photos captured by the phone turned out good with natural colours and decent edge detection in bokeh shots. The 8-megapixel front camera captured crisp selfies, and thankfully, it did not perform any aggressive skin smoothening. The Infinix Smart 3 Plus’ 3,500mAh battery ensured that the phone was able to sail past a day of regular usage with ease.

The C2 is a budget offering from Realme and is the successor of the Realme C1. It sports a 6.1-inch HD+ display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for protection. It has good viewing angles and also offers the option to change the colour temperature of the display. 

The Realme C2 is well designed and has a diamond-cut pattern on the back that makes it look premium. The phone is compact and feels comfortable to hold in the hand. It has a dual camera setup at the back which consists of a 13-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel depth sensor.

Powering the smartphone is .a MediaTek Helio P22 SoC and comes in two variants- 2GB RAM with 16GB storage, and 3GB RAM with 32GB of storage. We had the 3GB RAM variant and found it to be powerful enough for day-to-day tasks but couldn't run big games smoothly. 

The Realme C2 runs ColourOS 6 on top of Android 9 Pie which is the latest version of Android. We found a few apps preinstalled on the smartphone which could be uninstalled easily. Realme also offers a few useful features in the form of driving and riding modes.

Realme has packed in a 4000mAh battery which delivers very good battery life. The supplied 10W charger is also quick enough to top the battery up. The cameras on the Realme C2 deliver average performance. The phone wasn't consistent in getting the exposure right in daylight but suffered in low-light.

For the asking price of Rs. 5,999 the base variant of the Realme C2 does look impressive on paper but the variant we tested was priced at Rs. 7,999. If you are looking at the higher variant of the Realme C2, you can look at the Redmi 7 and the Nokia 5.1 Plus as the alternatives.  

The Xiaomi Redmi Go is an extremely affordable smartphone that will automatically appeal to people on a tight budget, but it also has enough features for those who just want a simple phone without fancy bells and whistles. The processor is fairly entry-level and you won't be able to run today's popular action games, but it's enough for calls, messaging apps, and social media. Similarly, the camera just about covers the basics, but you'll be disappointed if you want to preserve your memories in the highest quality.

The RAM and storage are very limited but you can add a microSD card. The screen is relatively good for a phone priced this low. Battery life is also good, and you won't find much to fault about build quality.

The Asus ZenFone Lite L1 sports a 5.45-inch display with HD+ resolution. It is powered by a Snapdragon 430 processor and has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. At the back, it has a 13-megapixel primary camera and a 5-megapixel selfie shooter with a selfie flash. The phone runs on Android Oreo with ZenUI on top. The phone has a 3000mAh battery. The ZenFone Lite L1 is a dual-SIM device and has two Nano SIM slots, it has support for 4G as well as VoLTE. It also has a dedicated microSD card slot that supports cards of up to 256GB.

The ZenFone Max M1 has a 5.45-inch HD+ display with 2.5D curved glass on top. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor. It has 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage which is further expandable up to 256GB. The Max M1 is a dual SIM device and has two Nano SIM slots. There is support for 4G as well as VoLTE on both slots but only one can latch onto a 4G network. The Max M1 runs on Android Oreo with ZenUI on top and has a 4000mAh battery. It has a 13-megapixel primary camera and an 8-megapixel selfie shooter. There is a fingerprint scanner as well as face recognition to unlock the smartphone.

The Lenovo K9 marks a return for the once-popular brand to the highly competitive budget segment. It promises two cameras on the front and two on the rear, as well as an attractive glass body. We were a little disappointed with the construction quality of our review unit, but it did look very good. Performance is just about okay for an entry-level phone and the cameras actually surprised us with decent results in some situations, though this is still very much an entry-level phone. Battery life is a strong point, and the software is clean with useful customisations. The hybrid dual-SIM slot is disappointing.