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With Nokia pitching the X at the budget end of the market, there are plenty of alternatives, but which are the best?
Nokia Asha 503
Nokia have another budget offering in the Asha 503. The 503 can be found for very competitive prices on Pay As You Go with O2 selling it for just £39.99, and other offers are available if you shop around.
For your money, you are getting the pinnacle of the Asha line-up but this is not a fully featured smartphone. The Asha range devices are defined as feature phones. Despite that, it has a higher resolution camera than the X, includes a flash and has good battery life.
The Asha 503 has a unique and interesting design with a clear plastic shell around the coloured phone, it looks great and come in a wide range of colours.
On the downside, it is a little slow and has a very small screen at just 3 inches with a low resolution that makes it hard to use at times. The interface is not very advanced and the range of apps less interesting than the potential for the X.
If you are buying on Pay As You Go (PAYG) and your budget is extremely tight, the 503 is a decent offering, but the X is a much better prospect over time and is a full smart phone platform.
Nokia Lumia 520
Completing the triumvirate of Nokia platforms, the Lumia 520 is a viable offering at the budget end of the market,
In every mentionable way, the Lumia 520 beats the X. It has a much better screen and the processor in the 520 is significantly faster. The software it runs also makes much better use of the available power.
The 520 has a far more powerful camera and at 5MP, it packs in much more detail in your shots. It supports HD video recording as well.
There is more internal storage on the Lumia 520 too and with the same support for microSD cards, you are not missing out in any way.
The Lumia 520 runs Windows Phone, which is a lovely and very powerful smartphone platform, but lacks in the app department compared to Android. Of course, the Nokia X doesn't run Android, but it has the potential to run all those Android apps.
Price is the biggest issue, but still it comes in at under £100 SIM free, plus it's possible to find the 520 even cheaper on PAYG.
Motorola Moto G
Undoubtedly the most exciting Android phone in the price range is the Moto G.
Motorola managed to pack in a HD screen, a fast processor, a big battery and decent build quality into a device starting at just £99 on PAYG. It runs the latest version of Android and has some good Motorola build software enhancements.
The camera on the Moto G is reasonable and certainly a match for the Lumia 520.
The Moto G runs full Google Android with access to the hundreds of thousands of apps on the Google Play store and the full range of Google's movies and music offerings.
Compared to the Nokia X the Moto G is a far more accomplished offering. But it is more expensive and does not have expandable storage, so at the cheapest end of the range you have to make do with just 8GB of storage, which is very limited.
