Ultimately I chose the new Nokia 6, which Amazon sells for $180 (with lockscreen ads and offers). It features a 5.5-inch, 1,920x1,080-pixel screen, 32GB of expandable storage, the latest version of Android (7.1) and a fingerprint sensor. It also sports a metal frame, making this "cheap" phone feel like, well, my iPhone.

It has all the same core capabilities as well. It may not be as fast or have the same advanced cameras, but as long as I could make calls, send text messages, update Facebook, read ebooks, listen to music, get driving directions, check the weather and so on, I wasn't too concerned. [...]

Day 7: The verdict

So. Can a $180 phone take the place of an $849 phone? Absolutely. Can it do so without compromise? Honestly, it gets pretty damn close.

Because I tested just one phone for this experiment, it's hard to make a blanket statement about this. For $50 more, would I have been better off with Motorola's Moto G5 Plus, which CNET dubbed "simply the best budget phone"? For $80 less, could I have managed just as well with the aforementioned Alcatel A50? I can't say.

I definitely found myself missing the responsiveness of my iPhone 6S Plus, to say nothing of its better cameras. But here's the question: Are those things worth the extra $670?

Of course not. Absolutely not. And there's no question that if I spend a bit more money on an Android phone, I can get a faster processor and better camera. Much as I've loved the iPhone over the years, it's no longer possible to justify such a hefty premium. (The same goes for Samsung's similarly overpriced Galaxy phones, by the way.) Android may lack some of the polish of iOS, but when it comes to hardware, a budget phone can definitely get the job done. Maybe I'll have a change of heart once the iPhone 8 (or even 9) rolls around, assuming it has a seriously killer feature, but for now I'm pretty confident my next phone will be a very affordable Android model.