Cheapest mobile phones in South Africa — All under R200

Whether you cannot afford to spend thousands on a smartphone or don’t need all the additional features they provide, you will find no shortage of basic mobile phones you can buy in South Africa for less than R200.

MyBroadband scoured the online stores of Pep, Ackermans, Mr Price, and Game to look for the top 10 absolute cheapest mobile phones you could buy in South Africa.

We found several handsets under the Stylo, Quest, Mobicel, Itel and Premio brands.

At the time of writing, the cheapest model was the Itel 2163D, which cost Game at R159.

This cheap handset features a 1.77-inch TFT LCD screen, 32MB of internal storage, a dual SIM tray, and a 1,000mAh battery.

Game’s listing also indicated it had a VGA camera, but all the other online pages with specifications of the phone showed it had none.

In fact, determining the exact specifications of most of the cheapest devices on our list was challenging, with differing or non-existent descriptions available online.

For example, while Pep Stores said the Mobicel C1 had a 600mAh battery, the official product page on Mobicel’s website said it was 800mAh.

Therefore, it is best to double-check with the retailer before going through with a purchase.

Thinking twice about 2G

One thing all of these cheap smartphones had in common was that they were only 2G-capable. EDGE was also available on most devices.

An important regulatory development in this regard is the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies’ plan to shut down 2G and 3G networks to open up spectrum 4G and 5G.

According to its current timeline, the department wants to ban the licensing of new 2G devices by June 2022 and block the activation of new 2G devices by December 2022.

2G services are slated for shutdown by March 2024, while 2G networks are planned to be turned off by June 2024. The preliminary date for the shutdown of 3G is the end of March 2025.

Therefore, these cheap 2G mobile phones could be useless for making calls or texting in a year and a half.

But the department’s proposed deadlines are part of a draft policy document, which means they are subject to change once feedback from relevant stakeholders has been taken into account.

Major mobile networks like Vodacom, MTN, and Telkom are among those who have taken issue with some of the deadlines.

The table below summarizes the department’s proposed timelines for South Africa to shut down its 2G and 3G networks.

A second important factor to be aware of is that all of the cheapest phones in South Africa are network-locked out of the box.

Mobile operators use this approach because they often take a loss on its sale.

Ensuring subscribers use their network for some time helps them recover some of that cost.

That way, networks make it cheaper for consumers to buy a mobile phone with the promise of making up the loss by selling services.

Below are the ten cheapest mobile phones you can buy in South Africa in January 2023.

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Itel 2163D — R159

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Stylo Star — R169

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Quest Kuhle — R169

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Mobicel C1 — R169

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Mobicel S1 — R169

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Quest Dodger — R179

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Prize A13 — R179

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Prize A11 — R179

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Itel 2160 — R179

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Stylo Epic — R189

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Honorable mention: Quest Q24 — R229

We’ve added the Quest Q24 to this list as it is the cheapest 3G-capable mobile phone and boasts a larger screen and battery than the aforementioned devices.

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