Top 10 budget smartphones for Christmas 2012

6. HTC Desire C
The HTC Desire C is a bit quirkier than its similarly-priced rivals, which is why we like it so much.

Despite retailing for around £110, the phone features Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and boasts a 3.5in 320x480 touchscreen. Our favourite feature though is the handset's bright red internals, which become obvious when you lift off the battery cover.

HTC's latest cheap and cheerful handset also features a 5MP rear-facing camera, a VGA front-facing camera, HTC's Sense user interface and support for both 3G and WiFi connectivity. 

5. Huawei Ascend G330
The Huawei Ascend G330 is the sequel to last year's G300, and continues the tradition of bringing high-end features to a £100 handset.

Announced mere weeks ago, the Huawei Ascend G330 is in a different league to the budget phones we mentioned previously. The handset packs a vibrant 4in 480x800 touchscreen and runs Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich software. Huawei has equipped the G330 with some features of its own too, and has preloaded BBC Iplayer and a bunch of EA games onto the handset.

If that's not enough to woo you, the phone also features a dual-core processor, a 5MP rear-facing camera, a front-facing video call camera, 4GB of included storage expandable to 32GB and a 1,500mAh battery. 

4. Orange San Diego
At around £199 the Orange San Diego is a bit more expensive than some of its rivals, but that's reflected in the handset's specs.

For those who don't mind paying a little bit more, the San Diego delivers super-fast performance - thanks to its 1.6GHz Intel processor. In fact, the Orange-branded phone was the first Intel-pwoered phone to arrive on the market.

That's not all it has on offer either. The cheap phone, which does look a bit like an Iphone, also features a decent 4in 600x1024 touchscreen, an 8MP rear-facing camera, a 1.3MP front-facing camera and integrated NFC technology. It also arrives running Google's Android 2.3 Gingerbread software, equipping it with almost all of the functionality you'll find on the more expensive Samsung Galaxy S3 handset.