Hey guys, this is Austin.

With flagship smart phones costing

in excess of $1000 sometimes,

it really got me thinking.

Is it possible to get yourself

an actually decent smart phone for less than $200?

Which brings us here.

So in front of me I have four phones

all costing less than $200.

So I just took a look at the Nokia 2

as part of my why does Nokia exist in 2018 video,

and my verdict on it was actually really positive.

So for $100 you're going to be getting

some premium build quality features

like an actual aluminum chassis,

a giant 4100mAh battery.

So there's decent software, a nice screen.

There really wasn't a lot to complain about,

besides the performance.

Move up to the BLU and for another $40,

you're getting a much larger phone.

So this actually looks a lot more modern in a lot of ways.

I feel like the main thing

that you're gonna immediately notice

is the 18 by 9 aspect ratio on the screen.

There's still going to be bezels

but they're a lot smaller than on the Nokia.

One thing that is added on the BLU, though,

is a rear facing fingerprint sensor.

Something that's really nice to see

on a budget device like this.

Spend another $30 though

and you can get yourself the Doogee Mix.

Now this phone easily feels like it could cost

twice it's price.

So the first thing you notice is the near bezel-less design.

Yeah, there's gonna be a tiny bezel up top.

And there is a fairly big chin

but it looks very distinctive and that,

combined with the heft as well as the nice metal build,

the glass front and back,

this really does feel like a phone

that could easily cost $500.

Of course it's not going to be perfect,

so with that chin comes a fingerprint sensor

that's going to be down here.

Unfortunately you still have on-screen Android keys

which feels like a little bit of a waste.

And also, very bizarrely the front facing camera

is on the bottom right side.

But I guess they didn't really have anywhere else to put it?

With the NUU G3, you're getting something

that looks very, very similar to a certain series

of Samsung Galaxy devices.

But that's actually not going to be a bad thing

in my opinion.

So around back, it's got that same sort of

curved edges, you've got the dual cameras

as well as the fingerprint sensor.

But interestingly, you're also going to be getting

a tapered glass finish on the back,

as well as even on the display.

It does curve a little bit on the edges.

And bizarrely, even though they did add a USB-C port,

the only of these phones that actually does have USB-C.

They removed the headphone jack.

Which, weirdly, the Galaxy S9 actually was able

to keep this generation.

As far as the screens go, all four phones

actually do have decent displays.

So the Nokia 2 has a five inch, 720p panel.

Step up to the BLU and you're getting that taller

18 by 9 aspect ratio, with a 1440 by 720 resolution.

However it's going to be stretched on a six inch display

which does look a little bit soft sometimes.

The Doogee is rocking a 5.5 inch 720p panel

and interestingly this is actually going to be

a Samsung AMOLED panel.

Now the colors, to my eye, are going to be

a little bit over saturated.

But it's a good looking panel.

However, my favorite is actually going to be on the NUU.

So this is still a 5.7 inch 720p panel.

Same as basically all of these.

However, the color, the brightness, the contrast,

and especially the viewing angles really do set this

a slight bit above the rest of the other phones.

When you're spending $200 on a smart phone,

you shouldn't expect any kind of crazy performance.

However, two of these phones

actually do perform pretty well.

One of the phones that does not, however

is the Nokia 2.

And this is honestly a case where I feel like

Nokia made a lot of the right decisions

when they were designing this phone,

but I think they cheaped out just a little bit too much

when it comes to performance.

So inside, you're going to find a Snapdragon 212 processor,

which is a very old and very slow quad core chip.

And that is going to be paired

with a mere one gigabyte of RAM

and eight gigabytes of storage.

Now the eight gigs of storage you can kinda get around

because you do have a microSD card slot.

But only one gig of RAM and that slow CPU

just makes Android feel not great.

Move up to the Vivo and you're going to be getting

an upgraded Snapdragon 425 processor.

That's still going to be quad core,

however there are going to be updated Cortex 853s,

which is pretty much shared with the rest of these phones.

And importantly, you're going to be getting

three gigs of RAM as well as 32 gigs of storage.

That's going to be plenty to run pretty much

any kind of Android app or game right now.

And on top of that, what you're going to be getting

is a pretty decently sized 3000mAh battery.

Interestingly, both the Doogee as well as the NUU

are rocking very similar specs.

So they each have the MediaTek 6757 eight core processor.

They're both paired with four gigabytes of RAM.

And they both also have 64 gigabytes of built in storage

with microSD expandability.

The biggest difference here is that while the NUU

has a 3000mAh battery,

the Doogee is going to have a slightly bigger

3380mAh cell.

That was a lot of words.

Use these phones in the real world though,

and you'll see this is one of the best examples

of why specs and benchmarks aren't everything.

So inside Geekbench what you're going to find

is that the Doogee and the NUU

are going to be significantly faster.

But in practice, that's actually not the case.

So the BLU actually feels really nice.

Sure, on paper, it's not going to have quite

the same spec and quite as much memory

but it's fairly snappy.

It's going to be responsive.

And it is going to have the power to do some gaming.

However, when you step to the Doogee,

what you're gonna find is something that feels

really, really old school.

There's one clear reason for that.

This software is straight garbage town.

Now I think what it is, is it's going to be a really

poorly optimized build of Android

paired with a pretty heavy skin.

So when I'm scrolling around here,

what I feel is just the frame rate is slow.

It doesn't feel responsive.

It really feels like I'm using a phone from five, six,

seven years ago, and that's totally not okay

at any price, especially when you consider

that cheaper phones are going to perform

and feel much, much better.

The best of both worlds though, is going to be

the NUU, so not only do you have the

on paper specs and the potential of those specs,

but you also have a build of Android

which is going to be fairly clean

and you know, not laggy and slow.

Sure, if you put this side by side

with something like a Pixel,

it's not going to be able to hold up

but for a normal person just to pick up the phone and use,

it is going to be totally respectable.

And of course, what better way to take advantage

of those awesome specs than by playing some

Clash Royale, the sponsor of today's video.

Don't you love my super clean segue?

I've had a lot of travel lately,

which has given me a lot of time

to play some mobile games.

And I've found that Clash Royale has legitimately

taken up almost all of my phone gaming time.

Clash Royale is a free to play game

where you can duel players in real time

while unlocking arenas, cards, and collecting treasure.

Now I gotta say, I'm not usually into freemium mobile games,

but Clash Royale is really well done.

So it's really simple to be able to get into a match,

and once you get in there, while it's easy to learn,

there's plenty of depth to make it challenging.

And you can still play with your friends as well.

And if you really wanna get into it,

they released a new feature called Clan Wars,

where you could assemble a clan and compete against others

in a series of battle modes to see who's the best.

So if this looks cool to you, you can check it out

in the link in the description.

Or you can just search up Clash Royale

on Google Play as well as the App Store.

While it might be slow, the Nokia 2 has the cleanest build

of Android here.

Now right now, it's running on Android 7

although it will be getting an update to Oreo pretty soon.

But even though this isn't an Android One device,

it really does feel like it.

There's essentially no bloat, and actually

Nokia's been good with updates, too.

The NUU G3 isn't far off.

Now yes, there are a couple of apps

and they've done a little bit of tweaking,

but for the most part, you are getting a stock build

of Android.

What you're not necessarily getting though

is any real guarantee of solid Android updates

in the future.

But, right now, seems to be working out okay

if you don't mind taking the risk.

Come over to the BLU and well,

we've got some software issues.

First of all, it is a pretty offensive skin.

So not only do you not even have an app drawer,

but there's a lot of bloat on this guy.

Now I get it, they've gotta make some sacrifices

to be able to hit this price point,

but if this is me, I would put some serious work

into cleaning up as much as I could,

changing the launcher because right now,

yeah, not good.

Whereas the Doogee has well some straight

garbage town software that I've already complained about.

But, yeah, it's just not good.

But what could be good are the cameras

on all four of these phones.

Or they might not be good, actually.

They are less than $200.

So, yeah.

So to start with, let's give the $100 Nokia 2 a try.

Now this guy has a single eight megapixel

rear facing camera.

So as with a lot of things on the Nokia 2,

the performance is not going to be fast

when it comes to taking photos.

And to be fair, this is a really challenging shot,

which it really doesn't hold the highlights well in.

That's a very white sky.

There's some detail there, although

it almost seems like the processing is a little bit

soft.

Although I say processing, most likely it's the

less than stellar optics on this tiny, tiny little camera.

Stepping up in the budget range to the $140 BLU