A surprisingly good phone for $250, the TCL 60 XE Nxtpaper 5G‘s spotlight feature revolves around its matte, paperlike display. While TCL says it lowers blue light from entering your eyes (supposedly to reduce eyestrain and improve sleep quality), there’s no substantive evidence that these blockers do much. Instead, you should buy this phone if you think you’ll enjoy the antireflective screen, which feels almost like an e-reader. There’s even a switch on the side of the device that lets you swap modes, like Ink Paper Mode, which converts it to a black-and-white screen with a warmer color temperature, and a Kindle-like reading experience.

Performance is solid for the money, and you get additional perks like a microSD card slot, NFC for contactless payments, and wireless charging. It works on every major US carrier, too. TCL’s lackluster software update policy means this device won’t receive Android 17. Worse, the newer TCL Nxtpaper 70 Pro no longer has the headphone jack.

Want to spend as little as possible? You can probably make do with the Moto G Play 2026, which features 5G connectivity for the first time. Performance is just OK—apps can take a beat to load, and everything generally feels sluggish. Folks I spoke with on the phone said my audio quality didn’t sound great either. You do get a decently sharp and bright screen, two days of battery life, a microSD card slot to expand the 64 GB of storage, and a headphone jack. I spent a week using it, and other than being patient with its performance, it was serviceable.

If your needs are minimal, the Moto G Play 2026 will do the job, though you may want to go for the nearly identical Moto G 2026, which has the same specs but with upgraded cameras and 128 GB of storage. That, or catch the aforementioned Moto G Power 2026 when it inevitably goes on sale.

If you want to jack in, but also unplug from the world, consider the Minimal Phone. This Android handset has a tiny, 4.3-inch e-paper screen and a physical keyboard. It lets you access all of your favorite apps, but since the screen constantly ghosts and isn’t suited for video playback, you’ll find yourself barely using social media (the cameras are also pretty bad). That’s kind of the point—suffering through a subpar experience in some apps more than others means you’re also relying on your phone less. You can still access modern-day amenities like Uber, authenticators, and banking apps.

Minimal promises to support the phone with updates for five years, though it’s a new company, so there’s always the risk that it could go under and halt support. The phone has most of the perks you’d want, from contactless payments via NFC to wireless charging. Just know that it’s designed to be used less than a normal smartphone—except if you want to jack in and jam out to Radiohead all day.

Asus may have exited the smartphone market, but Nubia is here to fill the void with its Redmagic gaming phones. The current iteration is the Redmagic 11 Pro—one of the only smartphones on the market with a headphone jack and the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 flagship processor. That means you get some of the best performance around! Other perks include a large 6.85-inch AMOLED screen, a 144-Hz refresh rate, and a massive 7,500-mAh battery. It’s designed to play top-tier mobile games, and it does it easily.

The cameras take a back seat, so keep that in mind, and the software experience is lackluster, though the company is now offering five years of updates. Still, if you desperately want a dedicated headphone jack on your smartphone and don’t want to compromise on performance, the Redmagic 11 Pro is one of your only options.

You do need to be wary of carrier compatibility—the company lists supported US carriers on the product page, including AT&T, Google Fi, and T-Mobile. Some bands you’d find on other US phones are missing, so you may not have the strongest cellular experience even on some supported networks. There’s a 15-day return policy if you want to give it a shot and test if it’ll work on your network without problems.

Dongle is a horrible word, but using one is far cheaper than buying a new phone outright. While a basic USB-C to 3.5-mm adapter will do the job, I prefer this Belkin adapter, which adds a USB-C port next to the headphone jack, allowing you to recharge the phone while playing tunes. The dongle itself is plasticky, so you’ll want to be careful when handling it, but the USB-C connector is long enough that there’s enough clearance for the adapter from your pocket. The charger supports up to 60 watts, which is plenty for phones, tablets, and even most laptops. Belkin offers a two-year warranty.