Androids Phones In Our Budget

This roundup features 12 Android mobile handsets under Rs 20,000. Find out which ones are really worth their price tags. 

An Android phone resembles (or in fact it is) a miniature tablet PC which can be easily carried in your pocket. It features hardware components quite similar to a notebook or PC - processor, RAM, storage, display, networking, etc. These are smartphones and use the Android operating system, which is being developed by Google since 2005. The Android operating system is based on a modified kernel of the open-source Linux operating system.

Unlike the other mobile phone operating systems such as Symbian (Nokia), BlackBerry OS (RIM), Windows Mobile and Windows CE (Microsoft), Bada OS (Samsung) or iOS (Apple), the Android OS is open-source and can be tweaked for individual handsets. Because the Android operating system can be easily tweaked to increase its overall performance and productivity, it has quickly become the world’s fast selling smartphone platform. The year 2010 saw a significant rise in the demand and sales of devices based on the Android OS, and the numbers have been sharply rising ever since.

Manufacturers started shipping the first Android OS-based phones with Cupcake (v1.5) and Donut (v1.6), and then released firmware v2.0/v2.1 (Eclair). These operating systems needed a basic processor speed of 500 MHz for operation. Budget or entry-level Android phones feature low-end hardware specs, such as a smaller screen size and resolution, resistive touch screens, lower RAM/ROM and low built-in memory.

The latest high-end handsets available today ship with Android v2.2 (Froyo) or Android v2.3 (Gingerbread). These handsets have processors clocked at 1 GHz (2 GHz CPU and the Tegra 2 GPU-based phones are presently in the pipeline), higher built-in memory, display screens with higher resolutions (even Super-AMOLED based displays), and several other cutting-edge components that make them price and feature-heavy.

With the Android versions constantly being developed to be better, faster and more productive, the demand for better hardware will always be high. As the latest handsets have price tags that are out of the reach of many consumers, most of us are unsure as to which phone meets the right balance between features and price.

In this roundup, we have brought together 12 top Android-based smartphones priced under Rs 20,000 to find out which one comes out on top. These phones are entry-level handsets built with processor speeds below 1 GHz and feature Android OS v2.2 or lower. Different Android phones from manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson, HTC, Motorola, LG, Micromax, Spice, Samsung and Asus have been featured here.We take a look at their overall hardware features, specifications, build quality, ergonomics and performance to help us arrive at the best of the lot, two of which will win our Best Performance and Best Value awards.