If you were looking for a mid range smartphones in Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 price bracket sometime back, you would have faced the problem of lack of good options. 
But that is not the case anymore there are many good phones that has been either launched recently or has received a major price cut to be now selling in this price bracket.
Micromax Canvas HD A116 (Rs 15,500)
Micromax took the market by storm by launching a Quad Core phone for Rs 13,999 but was marred in delays and unlike any phone in the market its price has increased over the period of time and now retails upwards of Rs 15,500 with highest price being quoted at Rs 16,990 also.
And fortunately for Micromax even at Rs 15,500 this phone offers very good value and is therefore finding a lot of buyers.
The Micromax Canvas HD has a 5 inch display with 1280×720 pixel HD resolution, a 1.2 GHz quad core MediaTek MT6589 processor, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system and 1 GB of RAM.
There is 4 GB of internal storage in the phone which can be expanded to up to 32 through a micro SD card. Besides, 5 inch display screen Micromax Canvas HD has a dual camera including an 8 megapixel rear camera and a 0.3 megapixel front unit. Moreover, it supports 3G, WiFi 802.11 (b/g/n), Bluetooth, and GPS/A-GPS. Further is a 2000 mAh battery. You can read the review of the phone here.
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Sony Xperia Ion (Rs 19,770)
Sony Xperia Ion, which was formally announced in India last year for Rs 36,999, is now available for Rs 19,770 only. This is one of the biggest price drop in the Industry right now and that makes this phone a mouth watering deal. Sony Xperia Ion was the flagship phone for Sony in India before the launch of Xperia Z and therefore comes with very solid hardware and software.
At about 10.6 mm thick, the new Xperia Ion is a power-packed device with a large 4.6 inch touchscreen with 1280 x 720 pixel native resolution. The display on the Sony Xperia Ion is a Reality Display with a scratch-resistant, shatter proof sheet on the mineral glass as its protective surface.
Under the hood, the Xperia Ion houses a dual core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8260 mobile processor with 1 GB memory. This processor is coupled with Adreno 220 graphics. The Xperia Ion smartphone is PlayStation certified and can therefore run the legacy games with on-screen control buttons.
At the back, the Xperia Ion has a 12.1 megapixel camera to click high quality images and record 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second. In the front, there is a 1.3 megapixel camera capable of recording 720p videos.
Packing 16 GB on-board storage, the smartphone offers a memory card slot with support for a memory card of up to 32 GB. Besides, the phone also features Near Field Communication support and will be compatible with Sony SmartTags.
Nokia Pureview 808
If you are looking for camera phone, nothing is better than the Nokia Pureview 808. It comes with a 41 megapixel camera with industry leading optics and features and selling at the price that it is for Rs 17,999 it is a great deal of phone for this price.
Nokia 808 PureView has a 4 inch Amoled ClearBlack display, which unfortunately supports 640 x 360 pixel resolution. The display has been built using Corning Gorilla Glass technology for strength. Nokia 808 PureView has a single core 1.3 GHz ARM 11 based mobile processor and 512 MB RAM that powers the Belle Feature Pack 2 OS. The most novel part of this Nokia device is its 41 megapixel image sensor that comprises of five element Carl Zeiss optics with f/2.4 Aperture and Xenon Flash.
Nokia has added PureView Pro imaging technology, which basically makes the image sensor use a pixel oversampling technique to deliver the best and clearest quality photos. The camera is capable of recording a full 1080p HD videos along with rich audio and one can also go ahead for 4x lossless digital zoom. There’s a front facing camera but it has surprisingly not been enabled for use.
The Dolby Digital Plus mobile chip housed inside the phone delivers a great multimedia experience with supporting headphones. Nokia has added a 1400 mAh battery, which promises about 11 hours of Talk time over 2G networks. Other features of this device include a secondary mic for audio recording, stereo FM with RDS, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS support.
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Nokia Lumia 720
Nokia Lumia 720 is the latest Windows Phone 8 from Nokia and despite its mid range price of Rs 18,500 the phone packs quite a punch. We were also debating about including the HTC 8S in the list but this Nokia manages to beat the HTC on every count including price, display, camera and also software like Map and service like Music.
The Lumia 720 features a 4.3-inch IPS LCD touchscreen with 480×800 pixel resolution natively. This smartphone is about 9 mm thick and weights 128 grams. It packs a dual-core 1 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8227 mobile processor coupled with 512 MB RAM and 8 GB on-board storage. There is a memory card slot to expand the storage with up to 64 GB micro SD card.
Supporting 3G network with up to 21.1 Mbps download speeds, the Lumia 720 offers Dual-Band WiFi for faster data connectivity. It features a 6.7 megapixel camera at the back with Carl Zeiss optics and capable of recording 720p HD video easily at 30 frames per second. In the front lies 1.3 megapixel camera for video chat.
Other features of this smartphone include Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, Near Field Communication chip, accelerometer, proximity sensor, compass, GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS support, active noise cancellation with dedicated mic and 7 GB free storage space in Microsoft SkyDrive service.
Nokia has packed a 2000 mAh non-removable battery to deliver talk time of 13 hours on 3G network and about full day on 2G network.
Xolo X1000 (Rs 19,990)
Xolo, a brand of Lava international, has recently launched its latest Intel Clover Trail+ platform based smartphone, Xolo X1000, with dual core processor for Rs 19,999. Clover Trail+ is the latest platform from Intel and comes with lot of performance and battery saving tech and therefore a phone priced at this level with this kind of hardware is a great value.
This is the 3rd Intel based phone from Xolo withn Xolo X900 and Xolo X500 both thse phones have been great performers in their respective range and that makes us belive that Xolo X1000 will not disappoint and in our initial hands on test it didn’t.
The Xolo X1000 which runs on Android ICS has 2 GHz Intel HT processor, a 312 PPI 4.7 inch HD display, 8MP front camera and 2MP BSI front camera.
Xolo will get 2.5D Curved EDGE to Edge glass display with 314 ppi pixel density. Notably, 2.5D curved glass is also featured in the very popular LG Optimus G, which costs over Rs 33,000.
The phone has a unibody design, which gives it a slim look and comes without a removable battery, just like the Nokia Lumia 920, Apple iPhone, HTC Butterfly and Sony Xperia Z.
On the memory front it has 8 GB internal storage and 1GB RAM along with that microSD card which can be used further add 32 GB of memory. It has a 1900 mAh Battery.
Other option
Samsung Galaxy Grand a 5 inch phone from Samsung was also discussed but given that Xperia Ion was available for the same price, this otherwise very good phone looked not so good.