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Things to consider before buying a smart phone

It’s been one crazy week and it's in weeks like this that you end up doing much more than what you plan for. This was the week when I finally got my hands on a brand new Samsung Galaxy Ace smart phone. Every purchase hinges on some factors and this being my first smart phone I did a fair bit of research to arrive at some of the essential features I wanted and some others which I could trade-off with. Without any further ado then some of the factors (features) I considered are as follows:

1. Touchscreen (capacitive vs resistive): Here's an excellent link about the pros and cons of each touchscreen but what made me go for a capacitive touch screen was the fact that it offers multi touch support and is not prone to get activated by just any object (such as a dust particle) which comes in contact with it.

2. Operating System (OS): There are several operating systems (Bada, Symbian, Android, IOS, Windows) to choose from but the best OS I figured was the one which could support the maximum mobile apps.  I also found out there were several smart phones in the market with outdated operating systems which didn't offer upgrades to newer versions. Samsung Bada and Symbian don't support many apps and I wasn't willing to take chances with a Windows 7 mobile OS just yet.  Apple IPhones looked like a good choice until I saw the price tag. So right there by process of simple elimination I arrived at Android OS (which does support around 270 000 apps last time I counted and by no means is outdated just yet).

3. Processor Speed:  The > 1GHz processors are here to stay (the list of some of the fastest processors on mobile phones is right here). But the million dollar question for me was whether I was willing to trade this feature for a better OS or touch screen. I made a trade-off and ended up with a Galaxy Ace rather than say a Nokia 500.

4. Camera: I didn't want my smart phone to take the place of my digital camera but I did want a model with decent resolution. I soon found out that while many phones offer similar resolutions they differ on features such as auto focus or LED flash (check out advantages of a LED flash here).  I was willing to trade-off high resolution for these features and ended up with a 5MP camera

Some other features I considered were Bluetooth (see whether it supports the latest Bluetooth), EDGE, GPRS, Wi-Fi (Does it have a fast enough Wi-Fi support?) and last but not the least battery support. All of the above might be confusing if you have not decided upon your model.

Therefore the best thing to do before buying a cell phone is to compare the available models in the price range you are looking at. The more you compare the more you will understand the trade-offs and the must haves. I wish you a Happy Shopping!!!. Please focus on buying a model which is scalable according to the technology changes and makes your life easy.

Until Next Time,

Your Mobile Guru,
J.J. Chaitanya
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Comments

  1. JunDecember 21, 2011 at 2:07 AM

    Wow, a great posting, JJ!
    I like it all except that you succumbed to the evil empire of Samsung. :)

    ReplyDelete

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