7 Best Android phones under $400 (Sep 2017)

re you tired of searching for the best android smartphones under $400?

or you just start searching for the top mobile phones in this price?

If you are in any of these two categories, then you can end your search right here.

Because i’m about to show you 7 Best And Cheap Android Phones under $400 which will surely meet your needs expectations. (or)

If you are already a Android user and wants to upgrade your Android experience by purchasing a latest phone, then surely these are the top phones in this price.​

If you are new to Android, then i’m surely you’ll definitely love your first Android experience with any of these awesome phones.

1. All the phones in this list are unlocked which means you are free to use any carrier or plan in your phone. Learn more about unlocked phones.

2. There are some phones in this list which ships only within U.S whereas some other phones is available across many countries globally.

Let’s get started.

7 Best Unlocked Android Phones under $400

1. Honor 8

Huawei is really doing a great job by providing affordable android phones from past couple of years and Honor 8 is really a great addition to that list. It was launched on July 2016 and still a great phone under $400 in 2017.
There are 2 different variants available of this device i.e 32GB and 64GB internal storage. At the time of launch, 32GB storage variant was sold at $400 and 64GB variant was sold at $450. But currently even the 64GB variant costs only $320 that’s really a big discount for this premium device.

The Huawei Honor 8 comes with handy 5.2 inch with IPS LCD screen with full HD resolution. You don’t need worry much about the screen protection because it comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The best thing about this device is, its build quality. The dual glass body of this phone makes it unique and stands out from the crowd in the mid-range devices.

Honor 8 comes with custom UI by Huawei called EMUI 5.0 which runs on Android marshmallow 6.0 and you can upgrade it to Android nougat 7.0. The EMUI doesn’t have app drawer just like the iPhone devices. If you don’t like it, you can install Nova launcher or Google now to get rid of that.

I have already told you about the internal storage of this device, but if it isn’t enough you can expand it via micro-sd card. Remember that it is single nano-sim model of Honor 8. This honor 8 is compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile carriers.

The Kirin 950 chipset along with 4GB RAM really helps honor 8 to perform the device without much lags.

The highlight of Honor 8 is its CAMERA. If you a person who loves to capture lots of photos, then Honor 8 is really perfect choice for YOU. The quality and sharpness of Honor 8 fascinate you without any doubt. It has dual 12 MP rear camera and 8MP front camera which you can record videos up to 1080P.

Another 3 most important thing to look in honor 8 is, it has Type-C port, OTG and IR blaster. Not many brands provide all these 3 features in this price range especially IR blaster which is really a useful feature to control TV, AC and more.

The Honor 8 has 3300 mAh battery which gives pretty average battery life but you can quickly charge your phone up to 50% in just 30 minutes.

PROS:​

The kirin 950 chipset doesn’t heat up much while gaming and the performance of gaming is good.
Camera performance is excellent and you’ll be more than happy with the camera quality of honor 8.
Fingerprint scanner works really well and it provides shortcuts to open preferred apps.
CONS:

The outdoor screen brightness of the phone is pretty, it shouldn’t have been better.
The call quality should have been better.
“Without any doubt, Honor 8 is one of the top notch device which has premium build quality with dual glass panel and provides amazing feature which can justify its affordable price”

At a glance,

Axon 7 is one the best phones manufactured by ZTE till now.

Most peoples were comparing Axon 7 to OnePlus 3 when they launched this device because both these devices cost $400.

But now Axon 7 has little edge over OnePlus 3, because OP3 has disconnected selling in the U.S and the Axon 7 have become little cheaper than its original price.

In case, if you are fan of OnePlus 3 but can’t buy it due to it’s hike in price then you should definitely consider Axon 7 and it’s features. Let’s dive in to the detail and let me show you 6 PROS and 3 CONS of this device.

PROS:

Video Credit: YourTechGuide

As you can guess from these specs how awesome and fast Axon 7 could be. I forgot to mention that it has Adreno 530 GPU which can be very helpful to play both normal and heavy games in your device.

If you are a heavy user(or even normal user), don’t worry about the charging. Because Axon 7 comes with Qualcomm’s quick charge 3.0 which can charge 50% battery in 30 minutes. This is one of the biggest PROS of Axon 7.

OK. I’ve talked enough about the PROS of Axon 7, let’s see what are the 3 CONS of this device.

CONS:​

Do you see anything weird in the Capacitive buttons? I hope you DO.

Instead of normal back and task button, ZTE has decided to go with two dots as it’s Capacitive buttons.

If you are an Android user from a long time, you may not find any issue with this. But if you are new to Android, you may confuse with these buttons as which one is a back and which one is task key.​

The UI of the phone is good and gives lots of new options but one major flaw i want to mention here is, when you try to unlock your phone the first thing we see is notification. But in ZTE Axon 7, you have to press the power key and a BELL ICON in the top to see the notification or else you won’t see any notification.

This is major flaw in my opinion. Because it feels irritating when you want to check out the notification but you need to click on the bell icon every single time to do that.

Thanks to the latest software from ZTE, now the bell icon in the notification panel in optional. But remember that you have to update the software in your phone to make bell icon optional.

“If you want a flagship level Android phone under $400, then ZTE Axon 7 would the best choice for you”

 

3. Moto Z play

Moto Z play was launched on August 2016 after launching the Moto Z. Don’t get confused because there are few differences between Moto Z and Moto Z play. You can find it here.

Moto Z is a high end device which costs over $500 but Moto Z play is one the best budget Android phones which costs less than $400.

It comes with Super amoled display with 5.5 full HD screen and Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

It comes with Snapdragon 625 with the combination of Adreno 506. The device runs on Android marshmallow 6.0.1 but you can upgrade it to the latest version of Android Nougat 7.1.1.

It comes with 16MP rear camera whereas secondary camera of the phone comes with 5MP. You can also add modules just like LG G5 but if you are interested. I must say this the mods available for Moto Z play is very expensive though.

The fingerprint scanner is located in the front which works fine and USB Type-C is available in Moto Z play.

Let’s see what are the pros and cons Moto Z play got.

PROS:​

• The build quality is really good with premium design look. This is one of the best thing which you would want in every phone and Moto Z play can fulfil this wish.
• Moto Z play has 3510 mAh battery which is indeed the best part of this phone. The battery in Moto Z play is very good. The average on-screen time in Moto Z play is almost 7 hours. For normal users who browse a little bit, play some games it can last up to 36 hours which is insane because you won’t find much devices which have good battery life like Moto Z play.
• The audio quality from the headphone jack is pretty good. If you are person who loves to listen music/anything via headphone, you won’t have problem with that.

CONS:

• One sad thing about Moto Z Play is the misplacement of volume buttons. It is above the power button which is quite annoying.
• The volume to speaker could have been better.

 

4. LG G5

LG G5 is a predecessor of G4 which was launched in April 2015.

LG G5 was launched a year later in April 2016. I know some people could be thinking that even after launching LG G5 why this man is talking about a year old phone. Right?

Well I’m talking about LG G5 because this article is about good phones under $400 and currently LG G5 costs under $400 whereas LG G6 costs over $550. If you have a budget of LG G6, then you can surely buy LG G6 without any doubt because its better than LG G5. If you have budget of $400, then you stay here to read more about LG G5.

The design of LG G5 is neither great nor bad. The design of this phone is decent but the build quality of this phone is awesome. There is still some controversy about the build quality of the phone that is it made up of plastic or metal, you can watch this video by Erica Griffin to get clear idea about that.

The LG G4 came with 5.5 Quad-HD display whereas LG G5 comes with a little bit smaller 5.3 inch Quad-HD IPS display. To protect the screen, it comes with Gorilla Glass 4. It has Always-on display mode which will display time, notifications anytime on the phone.

It comes with powerful Snapdragon 820 chipset with quad-core processor and 3GB of RAM which helps the device to run smoothly.

It comes with 32GB internal storage and you can expand the external storage via micro-sd in its dedicated slot.

It has dual 16MP rear camera with wide angle focus and 8MP rear camera. The fingerprint scanner in the front works well. Another great thing about the phone is it comes with IR blaster which can be helpful for many people.

Now let’s talk about the Pros and Cons of this device.

PROS:​

• This LG G5 is compatible with AT&T and Verizon Wireless in U.S and the cellular call quality in LG G5 is very good.
• The color accuracy of this phone is pretty good and you’ll feel the experience of flagship device display.
• You can open the bottom part of the phone where you can open the battery or replace it. Not only you can remove the battery, you can attach modules such asLG G5 friends camera and more.
• Despite of having 2800 mAh battery, the battery life in LG G5 is above average. It also comes with Qualcomm 3.0 quick charger which can charge your phone quickly.

CONS:

• The back design of the phone isn’t really great. LG could have finish the back more smoothly than this.
• The placement of the loudspeaker in the bottom isn’t very good. When you play games/ videos, you can place your hand in loudspeaker by mistake. That’s really a sad thing for many users.

 

5. Moto G4 Plus (2016)

At a glance,

• Released on: May 2016
• Size: 5.5 Inches with full HD screen (1080×1920 resolution)
• Display type: IPS capacitive touchscreen
• SIM: Dual Micro or Nano SIM
• OS: Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 (Planned to upgrade to Android Nougat 7.0) see more details here.
• CPU: Octa-core (4×1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.2 GHz Cortex-A53)
• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 617
• GPU: Adreno 405
• Storage:                                                                          Internal: 16GB, 2GB RAM and 64GB, 4GB RAM     External: Expandable up to 128GB via SD card
• Camera:                                                                          Primary: 16MP with f/2.0 and more features         Secondary: 5MP with f/2.2
• Battery: Non-removable Li-lon 3000 mAh battery 

I have already suggested in my previous post that Moto G4 is one of the best budget Android phones under 300$. Now I’ve added Moto G4 Plus in this list because this is one of the top phone under 400 dollars.

There is not a lot of difference between Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus but still it is worth considering in this budget.

Here i’ll talking about the PROS, CONS and the difference between these two devices in detail. Let’s get started with PROS of Moto G4 Plus.

PROS:

• Doesn’t have a Hybrid slot: This is the first and main benefit of Moto G4 Plus, as it provides different slots for SIM’s and SD card. If you don’t like Alcatel 4S because of hybrid slot, then Moto G4 Plus is surely the best choice you may have.  Personally i like this feature because of 2 reasons.                       1. You don’t have to sacrifice your second SIM to use SD card.                             2. Unlike OnePlus 2, You can expand the storage via SD card. 

• Another great thing about this device is, it supports almost all the major U.S carriers such as 

• Moto G4 Plus has 16MP rear camera whereas Moto G4 has 13MP. The quality of the rear camera in Moto G4 plus is really impressive at this price but it has average quality in low lights.

• Fast charging: If you don’t like OnePlus 2 for the lack of fast charging, then you can choose Moto G4 plus instead. It comes with Turbo charger which can quickly charge your phone in 90 mins. 

• • The best thing personally i like about Moto G4 Plus is, its fingerprint reader. Nowadays, most of the mobile companies offers fingerprint scanner in the backside of the phone i.e below the camera. But In Moto G4 plus, they have enabled the fingerprint reader in the place of Home button. Take a look below,

 

I must remind you that another difference between Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus is Moto G4 Plus has fingerprint scanner and Moto G4 doesn’t.

The fingerprint scanner in Moto G4 Plus works really well and you’ll be impressed to know how quickly it can unlock your phone.​

• Moto Display and Moto Actions: This is another best part of Moto G4 Plus. Let me give you brief descriptions of both these features.                                                                                                                                                                                  1. Moto Display: When you pickup your phone after locking and placing it somewhere, Moto actions will display the notifications without pressing any keys.    How cool is that?                                                                                                  You can enable or disable this feature as per your choice. If you want to use this feature but don’t want to be enabled in particular timings such as night, you can also do this in settings.                                                                                      2. Moto Actions: There are 4 actions you can perform using Moto actions and all the 4 actions are very useful and i’m pretty sure everyone will like that. Here are they,                                                                                                            1. Double karate chop to open the torch.                                                                  2. Flip for do not disturb: For example, If someone is calling you and you want to quickly silence the phone, just place the phone face down. It’ll automatically put the phone in silent mode. If you are worried that you’ll miss any important call/SMS, you can prioritize it via settings.                                3. Pick up to stop ringing: You can silence the phone call just by picking the phone.                                                                                                                               4. Twist the phone to quickly capture the phone.

So these are some of the good things which i found in Moto G4 Plus. Let’s talk about some of the CONS of this device.

CONS:​

• Heating issues of Snapdragon 617 continues in Moto G4 plus too. If you are a normal user, you don’t need to worry at all. But if you are heavy user, continuous usage of this phone may lead to heating problem.

• The Lack of compass sensor in Moto G4 Plus is pretty sad for those who rely mostly in Google maps.

• Lack of Notification LED: Well personally i think they should’ve enabled physical notification LED because it saves much time.

• Earlier in Moto G3, they have offered water resistant But in Moto G4 Plus they have opted not to offer water resistant.This is really a bad move by the phone maker (Lenovo) 

6. OnePlus 2

At a glance,

• Size: 5.5 Inches with full HD display
• SIM: Dual Nano-SIM Card
• OS: Android 5.1 Lollipop (upgradable to Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow)
• CPU: Octa-core (4×1.56 GHz Cortex A53 & 4×1.82 GHz Cortex A57)
• GPU: Adreno 430
• Storage: 64 GB Internal memory and there is no external SD card slot
• RAM: 4 GB
• Camera:                                                                       Primary: 13 MP                                                  Secondary: 5 MP
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Po 3300 mAh battery

Well now you may think i’m crazy because i’m suggesting you the older OnePlus device instead of the newer one i.e OnePlus 3. OK, Let me clarify your doubt here.

When i started to write this post, OnePlus 3 was no.1 in my list but suddenly i saw this news.​

OnePlus has officially disconnected selling OnePlus 3 in U.S and Europe regionsbecause they are launching the upgraded version of OnePlus 3 callled OnePlus 3T.And mostly my readers are from U.S region that’s the reason i have not added OnePlus 3 in my list.

If OnePlus 3 could’ve still in the U.S market, it could have been the best smartphone below $400.

Well if you are a reader from U.S region and still wants to buy OnePlus 3, you can buy it via Amazon. But it may cost you extra $40 (or more) than the older price.

Are we clear about OnePlus 3 now?

Let’s talk about OnePlus 2. This isn’t very old model. OnePlus released this device in August 2015 and still performing well in the market.

OnePlus 2 comes with metal frame body which looks stunning and comfortable to hold.

If you don’t like back panel of the phone, you can buy a different and premium looking back cases for your OnePlus 2.​

​It has IPS full HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 to protect the screen and 3300 mAh battery can give you almost a day for average usage.

There are both good and bad things i found in this device which i’m going to talk with you now.

PROS:

• End of Invite system: This was the worst thing from OnePlus. Now everyone can buy OnePlus 2 (or other devices) without an invite system or code.

• Fast fingerprint scanner: The fingerprint scanner in OnePlus 2 is almost perfect and accurate.

• Left slider: This is a new feature which can be use to prioritize the notifications of the phone. This is pretty useful if you are tired of unlocking your phone and change the settings. This hardware button make very easy to change the notification priority.

• Minimal Bloatware: OnePlus 2 comes with less pre-installed apps which can save your internal memory and the phone may run smoothly. 

These are some of the major PROS of OnePlus 2. Let’s move to the CONS of the device.

CONS:​

• No fast charging: This is not a drawback for the all users, but these days many users rely on fast charging. I must remind you that OnePlus 3 has fast chargingfeature and OnePlus 2 doesn’t. If you want fast charging feature compulsory, then you should buy OnePlus 3 by paying few extra bucks.

• Video recording in OnePlus 2 is limited to 720P.

“After disconnecting the sales of OnePlus 3 in U.S, OnePlus 2 is one of the best phone you can buy under $400 (but it costly only under $300)”

7. Alcatel Idol 4s

​At a glance,

• Size: 5.5 Inches with the resolution of 1440×2560
• Display type: AMOLED Capacitive
• SIM: Dual SIM (Hybrid second slot)
• Operating System: Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow
• CPU: Octa-core (4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A72 & 4×1.4 GHz Cortex-A53)
• GPU: Adreno 510
• Storage: 32 GB Internal memory and can be expanded up to 200 GB via external SD card.
• RAM: 3GB
• Camera: Rear camera of the phone is 16MP whereas secondary camera comes with 8MP
• Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery​

Last year Alcatel launched Idol 3s in a budget of around $250, and now this year they have launched it’s successor Idol 4s with some unique stuffs.

In a highly competitive field of Android smartphones, Alcatel is trying it’s best to enter the flagship world.

The unique thing i’m talking about Alcatel Idol 4s is, in a budget of $399 they are offering VR headset and JBL headphones along with the phone. Isn’t this great?

Recommended: Advantages and Disadvantages of Virtual Reality​

Well not all the Android users may be surprised with this offer. This is a pretty good deal because you can get one of the best and cheap unlocked smartphone under 400 dollars with a VR Headset.

If you are not a guy who loves to play with VR Goggles, you can save your $50 by buying phone only in just $349. Sweet deal right?

​Let’s see what are the PROS and CONS of this phone.

PROS:

• Premium Design: Alcatel 4S looks very premium because it is built by glass and metal frame. Have a look,

Pretty cool look right?

The curved display doesn’t make hard to carry the phone. It’s easy to carry in a single hand without much slippery.

This time Alcatel has placed the camera in the center, instead of corner just like they did last year in Alcatel 3.​ This is a pretty good thing done by Alcatel.

Below the camera, we have fingerprint reader which can used to unlock​ the phone (which works very well) and in the front it has Quad HD display.

• • Boom key: If you have taken a close look at Alcatel 4s, you may have noticed a button in the right. That’s not a power key. It is called Boom key. Here it is,

The boom key can be used to perform several actions such as,

       When the screen is turned off:

1. You can turn on the screen by pressing the boom key.

2. You can ​double press the boom key to capture a photo or hold the boom for a while to a take a burst shot.

        When the screen is turned on:

1. You can active the boom effects which may look like starburst.

2. You can open the camera app by pressing the boom key, double press to capture a photo or long press to take a burst shot.

3. Take instant screenshot by pressing the boom button.

4. Launch any app from a single press. You need to select which app you want to open by boom key.

If you don’t want to perform any of these action when the screen is turned on, you can select “do nothing”.​

• Great Speakers: Another great thing about Alcatel 4s is, it comes with 3.6-watt JBL certified dual speakers on front which is undoubtedly one of the best speaker in any Android phones right now. The sounds of the loudspeaker is heavy and loud. Alcatel Idol 4s can even compete with other flagship devices when it comes to speakers.