This past year has been great for smartphone buyers trying to spend as little as possible.
It is now quite difficult to find a smartphone with a screen resolution lower than 720x1280 even at the bottom end of the low-cost segment. Apart from that, falling manufacturing costs mean that overall quality has improved, which makes movies, games, and even pages of text look good. RAM capacities have jumped, with 2GB now the accepted minimum and 6GB not unheard of. Similarly, we now see 32GB and 64GB options at prices where 16GB would have been considered good value last year. You can also find offers of unlimited cloud storage for all your high-res photos and videos.
Unfortunately, demand and supply gaps are projected to push the cost of flash memory upwards throughout 2017, so don’t expect that trend to continue. There’s also the issue of diminishing utility, as we’ve seen with processor speeds and core counts - things like fingerprint readers, fast charging, premium materials and camera quality will be what sets one phone apart from others at any given price level, rather than gobs of RAM and screens that are sharper than they need to be. (Gadgets)
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