TOP 6 smartphones for schoolchildren: inexpensive and advanced models for students of different | Articles | Phones

Infor­ma­tion for study and news — online, cor­re­spon­dence — in What­sApp and Viber chats. Smart­phones are inte­grat­ed into the life of a stu­dent from the 1st grade. What to focus on when choos­ing: tech­nol­o­gy, strong body, auton­o­my or fash­ion? Is it rea­son­able to pay a lot of mon­ey for a pop­u­lar smart­phone or is “sim­ple” enough? So that par­ents do not waste their ener­gy, time and nerves, we have col­lect­ed TOP 6 smart­phones for ele­men­tary, mid­dle and high school stu­dents.

Some school­child­ren need a smart­phone to com­mu­ni­cate with their par­ents, oth­ers — for games and study. Pho­to: img.freepik.com

Smart­phones for grades 1–4
Itel A17: bud­get smart­phone for brows­er, calls and instant mes­sen­gers
BQ 6645L Ele­ment: big screen and good pho­tos
Smart­phones for grades 5–8
Poco M3: 48 MP cam­era, bor­der­less screen and 2–3 days with­out recharg­ing
Sam­sung M12: a clas­sic with a 90Hz screen and an ener­gy-effi­cient proces­sor
Smart­phones for grades 9–11
Poco F3: the epit­o­me of a pow­er­ful and large smart­phone
Red­mi Note 11 Pro 5G: new with AMOLED screen and flag­ship design
Results

The opin­ion of the edi­tors may not coin­cide with the views of the par­ents, and the selec­tion may not coin­cide with the fam­i­ly bud­get. The mate­r­i­al does not take into account the rapid­ly chang­ing fash­ion for indi­vid­ual brands, the avail­abil­i­ty of equip­ment in dif­fer­ent regions.

Smartphones for grades 1–4

A child at 7–10 years old does not treat things like an adult. The smart­phone will fall, get scratched and dis­ap­pear with­out a trace in the maze of school cor­ri­dors. This is fine! It makes no sense to buy an armor-pierc­ing mod­el. Devices with (real) shock and water pro­tec­tion are very expen­sive. From the loss of pro­tec­tion is not at all. Con­clu­sion: put up with a pos­si­ble break­down or loss of your smart­phone in advance.

The choice of phone is also influ­enced by the con­di­tions of train­ing. In a rur­al school, every­thing is tra­di­tion­al: text­books, note­books, tasks on the board, com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing breaks. Tech­no­log­i­cal smart­phones for study and com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the net­work are not required there. In the Moscow Lyceum, slides of pre­sen­ta­tions are pho­tographed right in the class­room, and infor­ma­tion is searched on the Inter­net. The child will be com­fort­able with a smart­phone that can han­dle this.

A reli­able push-but­ton phone is enough to com­mu­ni­cate with par­ents. Nokia 110 will not be dis­charged even in two days, it will intro­duce the child to the leg­endary Snake game and SMS mes­sages. With a price of 1900 rubles, the phone is not so piti­ful to lose. But we are talk­ing about smart­phones. With them, the mod­ern stu­dent is more famil­iar. Odnok­lass­ni­ki will not play a joke, you can quick­ly open Wikipedia or a dic­tio­nary — it is psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly eas­i­er with a smart­phone.

Itel A17: budget smartphone for browser, calls and instant messengers

Itel A17 looks mod­ern, is friend­ly with instant mes­sen­gers and costs no more than 4,000 rubles. Pho­to: dns-shop.ru

Itel A17 is iTel Mobile’s base line smart­phone with an ultra-low price. There is no need to be afraid of a cheap device: iTel has a rep­u­ta­tion as a reli­able brand. The com­pa­ny is one of the top 10 largest smart­phone man­u­fac­tur­ers in the world.

Mod­el A17 is a 5‑inch dis­play with a body size of 145 x 74 x 10 mm. The para­me­ters are suit­able for a child: the smart­phone does not take up much space, it is easy to hold, the screen is large enough not to strain your eyes. At a res­o­lu­tion of 854 x 480, objects on the dis­play are dis­played clear­ly and large.

The Spread­trum SC7731E proces­sor is respon­si­ble for the per­for­mance of the smart­phone. Four cores with a fre­quen­cy of 1.3 GHz will not allow you to play heavy games, but there will be no prob­lems with instant mes­sen­gers and a brows­er. To make it eas­i­er for the proces­sor, engi­neers have equipped the Itel A17 with a lighter ver­sion of Android 10 Go Edi­tion. This is a child-friend­ly shell with a very sim­ple inter­face.

If you remove unnec­es­sary stock appli­ca­tions, Itel A17 will add speed. Pho­to: .lazada.com.ph

The 2400 mAh bat­tery is def­i­nite­ly enough for a full school day. If the child does not spend all his free time with a smart­phone, the Itel A17 bat­tery will not run out until the evening. On a smart­phone, you can take pic­tures with the front or rear cam­era. The qual­i­ty is not “iPhone”, but much bet­ter than the pic­tures on the old cam­era phone from the zero.

You can for­get about dynam­ic range, expo­sure set­tings, high detail. But there is aut­o­fo­cus and video shoot­ing in 720p. Pho­to: megaobzor.com

How Itel A17 stands out from oth­er “school” smart­phones in the cat­e­go­ry up to 4000 rubles:

• The beau­ti­ful blue back pan­el will appeal to both girls and boys. Option with a black cov­er — for visu­al pro­tec­tion against scratch­es.
• Dis­mount­able case: the back pan­el and bat­tery can be eas­i­ly replaced with­out call­ing for a ser­vice.
• Sup­ports 2 SIM cards.
• Cam­era with aut­o­fo­cus and flash.
• Shell on under­stand­able Android: every­thing is in Russ­ian, any appli­ca­tions from the Play Mar­ket are sup­port­ed.
• The screen is pro­tect­ed by Asahi Glass Drag­ontrail. It will not save you from falling from 10 m onto a tile, but it will reduce the like­li­hood of small cracks.
• 16 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry for stor­ing files and pho­tos.
• There is an FM radio and a head­phone jack.

BQ 6645L Element: big screen and good photos

BQ 6645L Ele­ment runs on pure Android and is not infe­ri­or to for­eign coun­ter­parts in design. Pho­to: droidnews.ru

BQ 6645L Ele­ment is a Russ­ian brand smart­phone with a large IPS screen with a thin bezel. The dis­play size is 6.52 inch­es. Unusu­al­ly for a child’s hand, but on such a screen it is very con­ve­nient to sit in the brows­er, watch car­toons and take notes on stud­ies.

The proces­sor of the device is Unisoc SC9863A with eight Cor­tex-A55 cores. Entry-lev­el per­for­mance sys­tem, but man­ages light games (at low set­tings). Thanks to 3 GB of RAM, work in appli­ca­tions does not cause dis­com­fort. Every­thing opens and starts with­out a long wait.

BQ 6645L Ele­ment will help pass the time at recess. Pho­to: ixbt.com

The cam­era mod­el with a matrix of 13 megapix­els does not fright­en with the qual­i­ty of the pho­to and pleas­es with the set­tings. In the inter­face of the stan­dard appli­ca­tion — access to HDR options, man­u­al con­trol, night shoot­ing. A rich set for the phone for 8500–9000 rubles!

The child will be able to under­stand (with the help of par­ents) the basics of pho­tog­ra­phy and cap­ture the bright moments of life. It is not a shame to share pic­tures from BQ 6645L Ele­ment in social net­works.

Excur­sions and walks will remain in the phone’s mem­o­ry in a beau­ti­ful way. Day­time shots from the device are obtained with­out noise. Pho­to: ixbt.com

In read and video mode, the smart­phone bat­tery works with­out recharg­ing up to 14–17 hours.

Advan­tages of BQ 6645L Ele­ment:

• A cam­era for pho­tos, not for show. Lots of modes.
• 1080p video — you can make videos for YouTube.
• Fin­ger­print scan­ners and face unlock — the basic pro­tec­tion of the device will hide data from curi­ous class­mates.
• Large, mod­ern, bright IPS-screen with scratch pro­tec­tion.
• Replace­able bat­tery.
• Per­for­mance for school tasks and sim­ple enter­tain­ment is suf­fi­cient.

An alter­na­tive option up to 10,000 rubles is Realme C21‑Y with NFC. A sim­i­lar smart­phone with a good cam­era and a con­tact­less pay­ment func­tion.

Smartphones for grades 5–8

In high school, stu­dents’ tech­noap­petites are on the rise. The guys get involved in an active life in social net­works (post­ing, down­load­ing and pub­lish­ing videos), mas­ter bank­ing prod­ucts, online video ser­vices and games. A smart­phone needs more auton­o­my and per­for­mance, a decent cam­era and an adap­tive oper­at­ing sys­tem adapt­ed to dif­fer­ent tasks.

The child’s hob­bies are an impor­tant fac­tor in choos­ing. In grades 7–8, chil­dren can edit pho­tos, cre­ate musi­cal com­po­si­tions, draw on a smart­phone.

Poco M3: 48 MP camera, borderless screen and 2–3 days without recharging

The slo­gan of Poco is you get more than you expect­ed. Poco M3 for 11500 rubles exceeds expec­ta­tions in design, cam­era and per­for­mance. Pho­to: rosetked.me

Bright, fast, with a fash­ion­able design — Poco M3 deserves all the pos­i­tive epi­thets. The leather-look back pan­el resists fin­ger­prints, and the yel­low and blue col­ors of the lid are eye-catch­ing. The huge 6.53-inch IPS LCD dis­play with Full HD+ res­o­lu­tion has excel­lent detail. Videos, pho­tos, games — every­thing is dis­played clear­ly and nat­u­ral­ly.

The MIUI 12 brand­ed shell can be ful­ly cus­tomized. There is a func­tion of parental con­trol and “dig­i­tal well-being” — to pro­tect appli­ca­tions from dele­tion, lim­it the time of work­ing with the device. It’s easy to choose a dis­play col­or scheme that is com­fort­able for the child, acti­vate the dark mode and take care of the eyes.

MIUI in set­up and inter­face is often sim­pler and more under­stand­able than “naked” Android. The case when the child will fig­ure it out. Pho­to: ria.ru

The Poco M3 is pow­ered by a Snap­drag­on 662 proces­sor with eight cores. With the sup­port of 4 GB of RAM, the chip shows excel­lent results. Pop­u­lar games like Call Of Duty Mobile and PUBG run on medi­um-high graph­ics set­tings.

The 6000 mAh bat­tery is designed with capac­i­ty loss pro­tec­tion tech­nol­o­gy. Poco promis­es that after 1000 charge-dis­charge cycles, the bat­tery will still show the same 6000 mAh. Device auton­o­my:

• 17 hours — in the mode of con­tin­u­ous video view­ing with max­i­mum dis­play bright­ness;
• 8 hours — in con­tin­u­ous game mode with the same max­i­mum bright­ness;
• 21 hours — in surf­ing mode. Dis­play bright­ness is max­i­mum.

On aver­age, you will have to charge the Poco M3 once every 2–3 days. Pho­to: dgl.ru

A cam­era with 48, 2 and 2 megapix­el mod­ules opens up the world of pho­tog­ra­phy with­out the com­pli­cat­ed train­ing of a child. Poco offers an AI (arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence) mode to auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust set­tings. Inquis­i­tive chil­dren will find a lot of modes in the appli­ca­tion — time-laps­es, short videos for Sto­ries, shoot­ing doc­u­ments, macro, etc. The qual­i­ty of pic­tures day and night is far beyond expec­ta­tions from a smart­phone for 11,500–12,000 rubles.

The Poco M3 cam­era does not need to be turned off after sun­set. Built-in algo­rithms will help you take a detailed, beau­ti­ful pic­ture. Pho­to: mobile-review.com

The main advan­tages of Poco M3:

• A clean and under­stand­able shell with con­trol options and deep cus­tomiza­tion — the stu­dent gets a clear and con­ve­nient inter­face for him.
• Triple cam­era for shoot­ing day and night, video for social net­works, school com­pe­ti­tions.
• High auton­o­my.
• No throt­tling (freez­ing) dur­ing work or play.
• Youth design.
• Mir­ror pan­el on the back cov­er for quick self­ies on the main cam­era.
• USB Type‑C con­nec­tor and charg­ing in 2 hours up to 100%.
• The fin­ger­print scan­ner is built into the side but­ton — it sim­pli­fies the work with the device, quick­ly responds to touch.
• Stereo speak­ers with loud music play­back.

Samsung M12: a classic with a 90Hz screen and an energy-efficient processor

The Sam­sung M12 is infe­ri­or to the “peo­ple’s Chi­nese phones” in the fill­ing, but takes its toll in build qual­i­ty, screen and style. Pho­to: click-or-die.ru

The new Sam­sung M12 mod­el is equipped with a capa­cious 5000 mAh bat­tery. The charge is enough for at least a day of inten­sive work. The 6.5‑inch dis­play with a pro­pri­etary PLS-matrix guar­an­tees rich and vibrant col­ors. With a refresh rate of 90 Hz, the screen dis­plays a very smooth and com­fort­able pic­ture. You can watch movies or play, watch­ing the whole palette of col­ors.

The smart­phone has an aver­age proces­sor — Exynos 850. The chip is not suit­able for heavy games (PUBG, etc.). Anoth­er fly in the oint­ment is the screen res­o­lu­tion, which is fixed at the HD + mark. But in the con­text of a phone for a stu­dent, this is not crit­i­cal. Sam­sung’s coun­ter­ar­gu­ments are excel­lent build qual­i­ty, One UI Core 3.1 shell with smart wid­gets and a pho­to edi­tor. You can dis­play the nec­es­sary “blocks”, hours, notes, etc. on the screen.

Cus­tomiz­ing the desk­top in One UI Core 4.1 is an aes­thet­ic plea­sure. Pho­to: androidauthority.com

Smart­phone cam­era with 48 megapix­el mod­ule cre­ates accept­able pic­tures. You should not expect mir­a­cles: pho­tos from the M12 do not dif­fer in super-qual­i­ty. But the smart­phone has a very sim­ple set­ting of shoot­ing modes.

Sam­sung is posi­tion­ing the M12 as a bud­get, bal­anced option. The price of the mod­el in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion is about 15,000–15,500 thou­sand rubles. Smart­phone cat­e­go­ry “reli­able, known, this com­pa­ny can be trust­ed.”

If a stu­dent fol­lows the path of acquain­tance with clas­sic brands, he will appre­ci­ate the build qual­i­ty, screen and thought­ful ergonom­ics of the M12. Then you can aim for some­thing more: A23 or even A52. In the mean­time, the M12 will cope with any task of a stu­dent in grades 5–8, except for games.

Smartphones for grades 9–11

In the 9th and even more so in the 11th grade, a smart­phone for school­child­ren is no longer a toy. In high school, chil­dren devel­op adult requests and atti­tudes towards tech­nol­o­gy. Some rely on a large bat­tery and an aver­age price, oth­ers work all sum­mer to save up for a flag­ship mod­el with advanced hard­ware.

The ques­tion of choos­ing a smart­phone rests on mon­ey, the views of the stu­dent him­self, his lifestyle and hob­bies. The­o­ret­i­cal­ly, a sim­ple “dialer”, and a “shov­el” with a huge screen, and heavy mod­els pro­tect­ed from falls will do. We chose two options, bal­anced in price, per­for­mance, and func­tions.

Poco F3: the epitome of a powerful and large smartphone

Poco F3 is a mod­el with a claim to the sta­tus of a gam­ing cam­era phone. Pho­to: igromania.ru

Xiaomi’s sub­sidiary brand Poco imple­ment­ed sev­er­al ideas at once in the F3 mod­el. Thanks to the pow­er­ful Snap­drag­on 870 proces­sor with the Adreno 650 video sys­tem, the smart­phone eas­i­ly runs any game (includ­ing WoT Blitz, PUBG, Gen­shin Impact, Asphalt 9). The 120Hz screen refresh rate makes gam­ing smooth and real­is­tic.

A Quad-cam­era was added to the gam­ing stuff­ing:

• main sen­sor 48 MP;
• 8 MP wide-angle lens for land­scape shots;
• macro mod­ule 5 MP;
• 2MP scene depth sen­sor.

In the hands of a school­boy, Poco F3 turns into a cam­era. You can save pic­tures in RAW and process them on a PC, get clear, detailed shots with­out soap and pix­els. Thanks to Sony’s IMX sen­sors.

Poco F3 will help the stu­dent to make a beau­ti­ful album with­out any extra effort. Pho­to: ixbt.com

The fin­ished result is dis­played on a bright 6.67-inch AMOLED dis­play with a res­o­lu­tion of 2400 x 1080. It is pleas­ant to look at the screen: rich col­ors, a palette cus­tomiz­able in the sys­tem. Oleo­pho­bic coat­ing pro­tects the dis­play from grease, mois­ture and fin­ger­prints, Goril­la Glass — from minor scratch­es. You don’t have to wor­ry about the safe­ty of the dis­play.

A 4520 mAh bat­tery guar­an­tees up to 16 hours of con­tin­u­ous surf­ing the net, up to 19 hours of video play­back. Charg­ing the mod­el via the USB Type‑C port up to 100% takes only 50 min­utes. The indi­ca­tors give the stu­dent more free­dom: on a trip or on a walk, you can play, take a pho­to, call with­out con­stant­ly look­ing back at the resid­ual charge.

The aver­age price of Poco F3 6/128 GB is 32,000 rubles. The price is high, but not over­priced. Shoot­ing, gam­ing, edit­ing pho­tos, work­ing with doc­u­ments — there is no task that the Poco F3 can’t han­dle.

Why you should take a clos­er look at the Poco F3:

• weight — 196 g with a large dis­play;
• gam­ing hard­ware and a good cam­era mod­ule with night mode, dual video and long expo­sure — a uni­ver­sal stuff­ing;
• stereo sound;
• bright­ness up to 1300 nits for direct sun­light;
• ener­gy effi­cient proces­sor. The auton­o­my is bet­ter than the Poco flag­ships and the top mod­el Xiao­mi Mi 11.

Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G: new with AMOLED screen and flagship design

New from Xiao­mi — for school­child­ren who care about style and a good screen. Pho­to: ixbt.com

The Red­mi series became pop­u­lar long before the release of the 11 Pro ver­sion. In the new mod­el, Xiao­mi coped with the prob­lem of the prox­im­i­ty sen­sor and worked on the design. Red­mi Note 11 Pro 5G looks sol­id, no worse than flag­ships. In the hands of a school­boy, a round­ed body with a frost­ed glass pan­el arous­es the inter­est of peers.

A sig­nif­i­cant plus of the mod­el is the screen. The 6.67-inch 2400 x 1080 AMOLED dis­play deliv­ers amaz­ing col­ors. With the refresh rate set to 120Hz, every­thing runs super-smooth and fast. The mod­el has a built-in AOD (always on dis­play) func­tion. Just tap the screen to see the time and noti­fi­ca­tions. There is no need to unlock the screen — AOD saves time and pre­vents you from con­stant­ly being dis­tract­ed by your smart­phone.

AOD is not always imple­ment­ed by default, even in Sam­sung mod­els with AMOLED dis­plays. Pho­to: ru.xiaomiplanet.sk

The per­for­mance of the smart­phone is based on the new Snap­drag­on 695 proces­sor and the Adreno 619 video accel­er­a­tor. In games, Red­mi Note 11 Pro 5G shows good results:

• Call of Duty, high set­tings — 40–60 FPS;
• Wot Blitz, high set­tings — 80–120 FPS.

Charg­ing a smart­phone from 0 to 100% takes just over 20 min­utes. A 5000 mAh bat­tery is enough for 24–48 hours of oper­a­tion. In stand­by mode, the smart­phone can remain oper­a­tional for sev­er­al days.

Stu­dents who are fond of pho­tog­ra­phy will not be delight­ed with the mod­el. The 108 MP cam­era han­dles day­time shots, but there are nois­es at night, and the smart­phone only shoots video in 1080p 30 fps. This is frankly not enough for 2022, but not every­one needs the per­fect cam­era. In terms of oth­er para­me­ters — dis­play, design, auton­o­my, shell con­ve­nience, charg­ing speed — Red­mi Note 11 Pro 5G will give odds to com­peti­tors.

Pic­tures tak­en with Red­mi Note 11 Pro are not great. They are just good. Pho­to: ixbt.com

Results

The divi­sion of smart­phones into class­es for dif­fer­ent ages is log­i­cal, but con­di­tion­al. It is not nec­es­sary to buy an inex­pen­sive device for a 4th grade stu­dent, and an expen­sive one for a high school stu­dent. The main thing is that the capa­bil­i­ties of the smart­phone are in demand by the child.