Croma Mobile Phone Deals: Cheapest 5G Handset Is Rs. 10,994, Sept 2026

We typed eight searches into croma.com's own search on 4 September 2026, three of them brand names that between them account for a large share of what Indians actually buy under Rs. 25,000. All three returned zero handsets of that brand.

“motorola mobile” returned 15 results and not one Motorola phone — 12 of the 15 were Lenovo items, the rest accessories from Urbn, Soundrevo and Pebbles. “iqoo mobile” returned 19 results and no iQOO: 14 Apple listings, three Croma own-brand items, a Sony earphone and a Google phone. “poco mobile” returned four results — three refurbished Poco F1 handsets sold under the Blynk refurbishment brand, and a Spigen case.

Redmi returns exactly one handset on this shelf. So whatever you came here to compare, the aisle you are actually shopping is OnePlus, Apple, Realme and Samsung, which are 67 of the 84 new phones we found. That is a stocking decision rather than a price, and it is the single most useful thing to know before you start.

Across the 84 new handsets, prices run Rs. 7,699 to Rs. 1,82,490 at a median of Rs. 40,999 and a median 12% off.

Only four sit under Rs. 15,000, and the composition of those four matters. The cheapest is a realme C61 at Rs. 7,699 — the only 4G phone on the entire shelf. Above it there is nothing until Rs. 10,994 (realme 14x 5G), then Rs. 11,694 (realme C67 5G) and Rs. 13,499 (Samsung Galaxy F15 5G). Three of the four cheapest phones here are Realme.

The shelf's real centre of gravity is much higher up: 27 handsets sit between Rs. 40,000 and Rs. 70,000 and 15 above Rs. 70,000, which together is half the aisle. If you budgeted Rs. 12,000 for a phone, Croma is offering you a choice of three.

Grouped by brand, the aisle's median badge is 12% and the gap between brands is far wider than the gap within any one of them. Oppo's three listings run a median 43% off and Vivo's eight a median 31%; Samsung is at 16%, Realme 14%, OnePlus 9%, Google 6% and Apple 4%.

Apple's discipline shows through almost perfectly. Sixteen of its 17 listings are badged either 3% or 4% — an iPhone 15 128GB at Rs. 57,490 against Rs. 59,900, an iPhone 16 at Rs. 67,490 against Rs. 69,900, an iPhone 17 Pro Max 1TB at Rs. 1,82,490 against Rs. 1,89,900. The single exception is the iPhone Air 256GB at Rs. 1,01,900 against a stated Rs. 1,19,900, a 15% badge, which is the largest discount on any Apple product on this shelf by a factor of nearly four.

Read the other direction, the deep badges cluster on stock that has been on sale a while: a Galaxy S23 FE at Rs. 44,994 against a stated Rs. 84,999 (47%), two Oppo A6x listings at 43–44%, a realme 16T at 43%. We cannot verify whether any of those stated maximum retail prices was ever a live selling price and make no claim either way. For the same brands read at a different retailer, our Croma smartwatch page found the identical pattern — Apple at 4%, everyone else far deeper.

Fifty-five of the 84 new handsets carry no customer rating at all. Of the 29 that do, most have one, two or four ratings, which is not evidence of anything.

The two exceptions are worth naming. The iPhone 15 128GB in Blue has 43 ratings and scores 3.1 out of 5; the same phone in Black has 30 ratings at 3.5. Those are by a wide margin the busiest listings on the aisle, and they are also among the lowest-scoring. We do not know what drives that — a rating on a retailer's listing can reflect delivery, packaging, price movement or the phone itself, and we did not read the reviews — so we are not going to interpret it for you. We are simply not going to hide it either, on a page where every other Apple listing shows a 5.0 from a single buyer.

The next-busiest listing is a Samsung Galaxy A23 at 4.2 from ten ratings. After that the counts fall to single digits. The practical consequence: on this shelf the star rating is not a usable input, and the specification line in the listing title — which does state RAM, storage and 4G or 5G — is.

Nineteen handsets sit here and it is the most competitive part of the shelf. Vivo's Y11 5G is Rs. 17,999 against a stated Rs. 27,999 (36%), the Redmi 15A 5G is Rs. 18,499 against Rs. 28,999 (36%), Samsung's Galaxy A25 5G is Rs. 18,494 and the A23 5G Rs. 19,199 against Rs. 30,990 (38%).

What you do not get in this band is choice of brand. It is Samsung, Realme and Vivo, plus the single Redmi. There is no Motorola G-series, no iQOO Z-series and no new Poco here because, as the first section sets out, Croma does not appear to stock them at all — and those are three of the names a shopper researching a Rs. 20,000 phone will most often have been pointed towards.

That is the honest framing for this aisle. Croma's prices in this band are competitive against their own stated MRPs, the badges are real percentages off real reference numbers we simply cannot audit, and the range is narrower than the category is. If the phone you want is on this shelf, the price is worth checking; if it is a Motorola or an iQOO, this is not the shop.

Check the brand is here before you plan a trip. Motorola, iQOO and new Poco handsets did not appear in any of our eight searches. If that is what you are shopping for, start somewhere that stocks them.

Under Rs. 15,000 the shelf offers four phones, one of them 4G. The Rs. 7,699 realme C61 is a 4G handset; the cheapest 5G phone on the aisle is the Rs. 10,994 realme 14x. Know which of the two you are buying.

Ignore the badge when comparing an iPhone to anything else. Apple sits at 3–4% off across 16 of its 17 listings by policy, not by promotion, so it will always look worse on percentage and may still be the right phone. The one Apple exception is the iPhone Air at 15% off. In the other direction, a 47% badge on a Galaxy S23 FE rests on a stated Rs. 84,999 we have no way to check.