We can find quite special mobiles even in the middle category.

I’ve described it several times before, this category is my favorite. I know these are not cheap phones anymore, but they are still an affordable category for those who spend their lives on the non-NER fairway. We all want to get the best for our little money. Someone is the best stadium, but most simply crave a good phone, tablet, smart watch, or other everyday item. Therefore, we are then able to tour the net for days to find the best possible prices. We try to help with this month after month. We hope you find our compilation interesting again!

Nubia Z17 mini

We open the list with a real delicacy in the person of the Nubia Z17 mini. Nubia is a subsidiary of ZTE, they are the ones who make the company’s higher quality phones. It’s like the Lexus among the cars. For this reason, Nubia phones are really real jackpots if we manage to bag them at a good price. Well, the price of the Z17 mini is pretty good now!

The soul of the mobile is the very combo Snapdragon 652, which has an eight-core processor, and these cores are not the usual Cortex-A53, more precisely, not all of them. Four very fast A72 cores were added to the performance cluster. In addition to the proci, we also find a graphics accelerator, this is the Adreno 510. The phone has 4 GB of LPDDR3 memory at 933 MHz and 5.1 GB of storage based on eMMC 64.

The interesting thing about the phone, which made it mini, is the diagonal of the display. Let’s say 5,2 colt I wouldn’t say small, but the fact is that in today’s halftone, this diagonal seems downright modest. In comparison, the resolution is pleasant, full HD, i.e. 1920 x 1080 pixels, which results in a very high pixel density at this image size, so it then produces a needle-sharp image. As I said Nubia makes real quality phones, so do the trio of cameras. There’s a 16-megapixel camera on the front under an f / 2.0 aperture lens, and a dual camera at the back, both 13 megapixels, but under one optics lurks a color Sony IMX258 sensor and a monochrome Sony IMX258 sensor under the other. These two cameras are capable of capturing satisfactory images even in relatively low light conditions.

The other capabilities are fine too, wifi is as fast as possible with the ac standard, among the navigation systems it knows GPS, GLONASS and BDS, we have a thousand sensors, 4.2 Bluetooth and what is welcome, it supports the B20 800 MHz LTE band to race the mobilnet.

You can find the phone in several online stores. The European Direct Mail in Banggood and the Priority Line - EU Express in Gearbest will be a duty and VAT free delivery mode.

Gearbest: Nubia Z17 mini - Gearbest

Banggood: Nubia Z17 mini - Banggood

Cubot X18 Plus

I'm not going to have much to say about this phone, because we wrote a regular test about it not so long ago. The point is that at a fairly friendly price, we get a very friendly phone, which is so friendly that my colleague Med1on, who wrote the article, hasn’t even been willing to give it back ever since.

I do write a few words though, just to make you feel like running through the article! So the phone has an eight-core, not very young, but high-speed processor. The display is FHD +, which means a huge resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels with the six-inch display. there is 4GB of memory, 64GB of mass storage, which I think still provides enough space for everything these days.

Of course, the more important sensors can also be found here, so there is also a fingerprint reader. We get GPS support so we don’t get lost, we have wifi and Bluetooth, and of course we also find support for the B20 800 MHz LTE band here. This phone is the cheapest member on this list, but you shouldn’t be very ashamed of it.

You can find our article about the phone here: Cubot X18 Plus - the high quality medium

And if you're thinking about shopping, take a look here: Cubot X18 Plus - GearBest

DOOGEE BL12000

It would have been a sin to miss this phone. It is so half-brick that a man could be killed with it from ten meters, but the fact is that it can survive on a charge for a week.

More and more manufacturers are finding such an extremely long-lasting mobile phone. The interesting thing is that we can’t even say that these would be such particularly economical machines. Certainly not! under the display and next to the battery live muscular irons who do not spare if they have to spin. Because of this, manufacturers can’t save on battery either, they have to install huge units.

The DOOGEE BL12000, for example, as its name suggests, boasts a 12 mAh battery. The central unit, just like the previous phone, is the Mediatek MT6750T, which can handle eight cores and a 1,5 GHz clock. Here, of course, there is a separate graphics accelerator in the person of the Mali T860. The memory capacity is 4 GB, the storage is 32 GB, which is still adequate, especially that we can expand it with a microSD card of up to 256 GB.

The display is the now standard six-inch FHD + resolution, which contains 2160 x 1080 pixels with an aspect ratio of the trendy 18: 9. In the field of sensors and radios as well, they would have copied the Cubot solution, the only difference being that the fingerprint sensor is here on the front of the phone. We get four pieces from the chambers, so two on the front and the back work together. We get 8 + 16 megapixels at the front and 13 + 16 megapixels at the back.

We already mentioned the battery at the beginning of the recommendation, which is the real special feature of this phone. It has a capacity that was only conceivable in an external battery for barely 1-2 years, and is now inside the phone. The huge capacity is not only good for driving a mobile phone for more than a week at average usage, but also for charging other phones with it, or even driving it to a campsite. So it's kind of a two-in-one phone, because we can even use it as an external battery.

Currently, I can only offer the Banggood store for purchase, here you can choose European Direct Mail, because through this the trader can send the phone free of duty and VAT. Or at least that's what they promise.

Here you will find: DOOGEE BL12000 - Banggood

VKworld T2 Plus

At one time, the phones were awful, the phones I had been told that Motorola had two phones after which I was only gagging my saliva, but I could not buy it. Since then, much water has been run on the Danube, and in the market there are only ping-pong-sized phones in the market. Many people complain about this, so we've been looking for a smart but small phone that can be folded out like old mussels.

So let’s start with size first. The VKworld T2 Plus phone has a screen size of only 4,2 inches and has a very good resolution compared to it. The display is based on IPS technology, the resolution is HD, i.e. 1280 x 720 pixels. On this diagonal, this resolution results in a decent pixel density, so we won’t have any complaints about image quality. The device received a quad-core MTK6737 processor and a Mali-T720 video accelerator. There are more smart smartphones today, but this display, this pixel, can also be moved by this hardware.

On these quad-core phones, low memory is usually a problem, but the VKworld T2 Plus comes with a decent 3GB of memory and 32GB of storage. There is also a camera on the front and back, the former 2 and the latter 8 megapixels. The supply of radios is standard. It also includes WiFi, Bluetooth 802.11 and of course GPS, which supports 4.1b / g / n standards, so as not to get lost. The built-in battery has a capacity of 2000 mAh and can be charged via the Type-C port. The good news is that we also get LTE support, plus the domestic B20 800 MHz band is supported.

The VKworld T2 Plus is a very special phone, so the price is not low either. Of course, it’s all just a matter of comparison, for such a genuine leather-wrapped, unlockable smartphone, if it didn’t have VKWolrd on it as a manufacturer, they could even ask for a fortune.

We just found the mobile at Banggood (don't forget, Europen Direct Mail!): Vkworld T2 Plus - Banggood

Xiaomi Note 5 Redmire

the fact is that i have been waiting for this phone for a long time. I don’t know if I’ll order a test of it, but chances are, especially since the price is quite friendly. From the previous series of four, the Note 4 was a real bestbuy offer, and for now, the offspring doesn’t look disappointing either!

What do you need to know about it? Primarily, it’s Xiaomi, and as such you can almost be sure of a guaranteed disappointment-free phone. Xiaomi quality is worth a few bucks even if the hardware isn’t too steel, but that’s not even the case here. The central unit is the relatively young Qualcomm Snapdragon 636, in which an eight-core processor was hired. The memory is 3 and the mass storage is 32 GB.

With the new five-series, Xiaomi has already switched to the new fashionable 18: 9 aspect ratio on its mid-range phones, which in this case also brings the usual six-inch diagonal and FHD +, ie 2160 x 1080 pixel resolution. On the front of the phone you will find a simple 13 megapixel camera, while on the back there is a double unit and a 12 + 5 megapixel pair.

Everything from radios and sensors is here, too. You can connect to computer networks with high-speed Wi-Fi, and discover other devices via a modern 5.0 Bluetooth connection. We get GPS, GLONASS and BEIDOU support for navigation, we have a fingerprint reader, a gravity sensor, and even a stack of other sensors.

The phone has really done very well, so far we can't find much criticism on the net. Compared to this, and of course the name Xiaomi, it’s not too expensive either. As it is popular in several stores, it is almost the same price, so decide according to your sympathy. Again, just make sure that you choose Priority Line EU Express shipping in Banggood and Europen Direct Mail in GearBest, because merchants promise duty and VAT free shipping for these.

GearBest: Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 - GearBest

Banggood: Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 - Banggood

This was our May offer from the mid-range. Surely there is a phone that you prefer, feel free to describe it in the comments, we are curious to see what you would have chosen. As the end of the month is fast approaching and we are still indebted to quite a few of the usual articles, this month we will be neglecting China’s top category in phones. So next time we come up with such a list early next month, we’ll target the entry level again.