Originally Posted by Faust:
“Buy cheap you buy twice - old but true saying.”
Depends what you buy. There are now phones ranging from £100 - £300 that offer a perfectly good user experience depending on needs.
A decent screen, acceptable camera, good battery life - £100-200
An exceptional screen, camera, battery life and performance - £200-300 (able to give phones costing £500-600 a run for their money).
There are also some sub-£100 phones that will suit a certain type of user, who may just want a basic phone that's still capable of running (Android) apps, like iPlayer or online banking, can take advantage of 4G (including operating as a hotspot) to hook up a laptop or tablet to the net, and supporting HD Voice for calls etc.
Increasingly, I'd say that many people no longer need to spend £500 or more on a phone unless there's a particular aspect they can't live without (which may well be more down to style over substance in some cases).