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Top 5 best gaming phones for under £200 (Summer 2014)

Pocket gaming on a budget

Top 5 best gaming phones for under £200 (Summer 2014)
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It used to be that the only decent mobile platform for gaming was Apple's iOS. That was all fine and dandy, but it instantly alienated anyone not willing or able to pay top dollar for a phone.

Google's Android platform has long since upped its game and offered a worthwhile gaming alternative. This means you can now buy an extremely capable multi-core phone for less than £200.

It's been a little over a year since we last did one of these budget gaming phone round-ups, and a quick comparison of our suggestions back then with today's suggestions shows just how fast things move.

Last time, for example, we included the single-core Sony Ericsson Xperia Play in our round-up. This time, we've ummed and ahhed over letting any dual-core phones in - and ultimately decided not to.

Elsewhere, the displays have got sharper and the Android experience itself has improved considerably.

Here, then, is a selection of five great smartphone purchases for all you pocket gamers on a budget.

Motorola Moto G (£100 from Vodafone)

We could leave this recommendation until later in the article, but let's not beat around the bush here. Unless you're willing to make the sizeable leap to a phone that costs around £300 or more, there's really no better smartphone around than the Motorola Moto G.

Not only is it the cheapest phone on this list, but it's also the best. It's astonishingly good value.

The Moto G is a quietly stylish, well-constructed smartphone with solid specifications that will run pretty much any game on the Google Play Store comfortably.

Its 4.5-inch 720p display is bright and crisp, with similar pixel density to the iPhone 5S's. Meanwhile, it's powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 400 CPU - far from the fastest CPU on the market, but plenty fast enough for gaming.

Besides that, you have the stock Android 4.4 OS, which is fluid and intuitive. What are you waiting for?

Samsung Galaxy S III (£199.94 Simply Electronics)

You'd think that more older flagship devices would make their way onto this list, but the smartphone industry doesn't seem to work like that. Former champs seem to hold a certain high price and then disappear from inventories altogether.

That's why this is quite a rare little deal for you. The Samsung Galaxy S III was one of the most powerful Android smartphones two years ago, and it's still more than up to the job of running Android games.

It's got a vivid 4.8-inch 720p display, which remains nice and sharp. It's also an AMOLED display, which means that colours practically pop out of the screen and smack you around the face.

Then, you have Samsung's custom quad-core Exynos CPU with Mali-400 GPU powering the thing. That CPU was one of the most capable chips of its time. It's still plenty capable here in 2014.

While the Galaxy S III is twice the price of the Moto X, the former's superior 8-megapixel camera and greater storage could give it the edge for certain people.

Sony Xperia M2 (£149.99 from EE)

It really is hard to make a case for any phone other than the Moto G if you're looking to spend less than £200.

We'll give the Sony Xperia M2 a nod because it's a very solid little handset. It features that trademark Sony style that sets it apart from so many me-too efforts. It's also got enough power on tap to handle games, with the same quad-core Snapdragon 400 CPU as the one inside the Moto G.

Unfortunately, its display isn't particularly sharp, its 4.8-inch screen lumbered with a sub-optimal 960x540 qHD resolution.

It does have its plus points over the Moto G, though, such as an 8-megapixel camera (albeit a somewhat mediocre one) and the ability to connect to 4G (though a 4G-capable Moto G is imminent for a similar price to the M2).

Plus, the one benefit to having a less sharp display is that the CPU and GPU won't be worked so hard, so games should run a little better. We're clutching at straws here.

HTC Desire 610 (£179.95 from Carphone Warehouse)

The HTC Desire 610 is much like the Sony Xperia M2 in that it's a well-equipped smartphone at a keen price that would seem like much better value were it not for the existence of the Motorola Moto G.

The Desire 610 has a 4.7-inch display, though again it features a relatively underwhelming 960x540 resolution. Still, as with all HTC phones, colour reproduction and viewing angles are excellent here.

Once again, the quad-core Snapdragon 400 CPU is under the hood of this low-budget thriller. And, yep, that microprocessor will run anything you throw at it.

In this blower's favour, you also get HTC's legendary build quality - its mid-range phones are often better built than most high-end Android phones. You also benefit from 4G connectivity and a decent 8-megapixel camera.

Furthermore, you will find here an excellent pair of stereo speakers positioned - somewhat uniquely - on either side of the screen when held in landscape mode. This makes gaming without headphones viable, for once.

ALTERNATIVE PICK OnePlus One (£229 from OnePlus)

We've had to separate our final pick from the rest because it's exceptional on many levels.

For one thing, the OnePlus One breaks our £200 rule (but only just).

Secondly, getting your hands on one is pretty tricky owing to software glitch-related delays, and a somewhat torturous "invite" system for purchasing the thing.

All that being said, we couldn't NOT mention the OnePlus One here. Why? Because it offers the tantalising prospect of top-end performance at a less-than-mid-range price.

It's as powerful as any other Android smartphone on the market right now, thanks to the presence of a quad-core Snapdragon 801 CPU. That's the same processor that you'll find in the brand-new Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8). Oh, and it has 3GB of RAM, which is 1GB more than either of those giants.

The unbelievable specs don't end there, either, for the OnePlus One boasts a 5.5-inch 1080p display and a 13-megapixel camera. Oh, and it runs on CyanogenMod, the highly tweakable Android mod beloved of the enthusiast rooting crowd.

It sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? With the aforementioned production and shipment issues, it might yet be. But having played extensively with a near-final handset myself, I can assure you that it doesn't disappoint in the hand... or when it comes to playing games.

Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.