When it came to midrange phones — those handsets that don't quite have the full feature set found on flagship phones but also don't have the wallet-busting price tags — device makers used to take the attitude that you get what you paid for. The midrange phones of yesteryear were serviceable at best, and if you wanted anything better than that, you needed to pay up for a top-of-the-line model.
That attitude has shifted recently, as phone makers look to broaden the market for their offerings. For the past two years, midrange phones have increasingly packed in premium features while still costing hundreds of dollars less than their flagship counterparts. High-end phones still dominate the best phone rankings, but nowadays, you can spend $500 on a handset and feel pretty confident that you're getting a relatively full-featured device.
