What’s an underrated smartphone? Well in our view, it is a phone that did have the chops, but got lost in the sea of marketing jargon and budgets. In this list we pick phones that impressed us in some way or the other, but didn’t garner as much reader interest as they should have. In an otherwise boring smartphone space in 2016, these phones were the ones that really kept us interested.
One of the best camera phones of the year, many would say Huawei got the implementation of the dual-camera right, and better than Apple. Plus, Leica’s involvement provided the refinement that the camera needed. In addition, Huawei designed a phone that truly looks classy.
Yet, the Kirin SoC and EMUI together bring this phone down, making it harder to recommend than it should be. The Huawei P9 needs just a bit of more work to beat the best.
Buy Huawei P9 on Flipkart at Rs. 39,999
Readers often ask us what phone should a camera enthusiast buy, in the sub-15k range. The Nubia Z11 Mini is our recommendation to them. Unfortunately, we’re often met with uncertainty, perhaps because of the brand name. It’s sad that the phone was launched in India late in the year. By then, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and LeEco Le 2 had already established themselves as staunch budget favourites.
Interestingly, the Nubia Z11 Mini excels in the camera department, which is the one thing that the two phones mentioned above are quite poor at. Some would even call it the best looking smartphone in this range, while its battery lasts a full work day. The Nubia Z11 Mini is slightly weaker in terms of speed and performance, but its camera more than makes up for it. Seems like a good proposition, doesn’t it?
Buy Nubia Z11 mini from Amazon at Rs.12999
Many a Sony smartphone has been called underrated, and the Xperia XA is the newest to join that list. The phone costs only Rs. 15,999, runs on the Helio P10 SoC, which is not the fastest, but passable. Sony lost out purely on specifications, since the Xperia XA has a 13MP camera, 2GB RAM and 16GB storage, in a world where almost all of its competitors offer double the numbers.
However, the Xperia XA is easily one of the best designed smartphones of 2016, and it would still appeal to a Sony fan. On first impressions, it even seemed quite snappy.
Buy Sony Xperia XA from flipkart at Rs 15990
The BlackBerry DTEK60 is an impressive smartphone, something that we haven’t seen from BlackBerry in a long, long time. The DTEK60 is Android with BlackBerry enhancements, and the first phone BlackBerry brought to India, since it stopped manufacturing its own smartphones. Is that what was need for the company to make a good smartphone?
Alas! The BlackBerry DTEK60, like many phones from BlackBerry, is expensive, and given the brand’s recent demise, it’s tough for consumers to spend so much on its smartphones. It does raise our hopes for BlackBerry’s future devices, though.
Buy Blackberry DTEK60 at Rs.50900 on amazon
The HTC 10 is fast, it has the best camera HTC has ever built, and it is one of the few smartphones that a true audiophile will enjoy. However, audiophiles don’t really make up the market, and in the sea of smartphones today, the HTC 10 lost its way, thanks to high price and perhaps a shadow on the brand itself. Nevertheless, the HTC 10 was a phone that really deserved more interest than it got.
Buy Htc 10 at Rs.42500 on amazon