If you want a phone for less than $500 that isn’t used or refurbished, there are two main options.
The first is to consider a phone that was made to be affordable, of which there are plenty from the likes of Samsung, Motorola, OnePlus and Google. These phones typically have a lot to offer for their price, such as great battery life, 5G support and a processor that isn’t the fastest but is still powerful enough for mundane daily tasks (i.e. scrolling through social media, texting, video chats, etc.). But to keep the price down, these cheaper phones come with compromises including lower-resolution screens that aren’t very bright, cameras that take just OK photos and plastic designs.
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The other option is to find a more expensive phone that came out last year, or even two years ago, for a discount. The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola, currently priced at $400, is a great example. I can almost hear you asking: “Wait, Lenovo makes phones?” They did this year, and it’s one of my favorite phones I tested in 2023.
The ThinkPhone was a good deal at its original price of $700, but it’s definitely worth buying with a $300 discount.
As the name suggests, the ThinkPhone is a collaboration between Motorola and its parent company, Lenovo. It has a similar design as Lenovo’s popular ThinkPad laptop lineup, right down to the signature red hardware button for triggering software shortcuts. It has impressive hardware for $400 that includes 256GB of storage (most sub-$500 phones only have half that capacity), a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus processor (two generations old but still powerful) and a lovely 6.6-inch 144Hz display (a higher refresh rate than most phones).
The back of the phone comes with the same bottom corner branding as a Lenovo ThinkPad.
I spoke with Sudhir Chadaga, global lead of Motorola for business, about the ThinkPhone this past summer. He said the phone’s design took time to find.
“We wanted to make a statement that the ThinkPhone should be the best companion to your PC,” said Chadaga on a video call. “It’s not just that they need to look like each other; they need to work well together.”
Besides being a solid Android phone, the ThinkPhone has a number of nifty shortcuts and cross-platform utilities with Windows. The cross functionality isn’t limited to Lenovo ThinkPads; the ThinkPhone can work with most recent Windows computers.
The ThinkPhone will get three years of major Android OS updates.
Clearly, the ThinkPhone made a good impression on me. But I should mention some of the drawbacks, and the first are the cameras. For $700, these cameras take decent photos, but they struggle in low light. If you’re buying this for $400, the ThinkPhone’s cameras are good compared with most other cheap phones.
The interconnectivity between the phone and PCs worked well most of the time, but there were times (such as when I had the ThinkPhone’s screen on a ThinkPad display) when I experienced an occasional lag.
In terms of software support, Motorola and Lenovo still fall behind Samsung, which offers four years of major OS updates, and Google, which offers seven years for the new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
While Chadaga and Paradise praised the ThinkPhone for business-minded users, it’s also a splendid Android phone. You may not care about having a phone that syncs to your PC or lets you use Microsoft Teams at the press of a button. But the ThinkPhone’s speedy charging, iconic design and otherwise high-quality hardware still makes it a worthwhile phone.
With its $300 discount, the ThinkPhone is the best $400 phone you can buy right now. The question now: How long will it remain at this price?
