Before you buy a new Smartphone!

Everybody uses a smartphone today and India is undergoing the smartphone revolution right now which is transforming most Indians into techno freaks. More and more feature phone users are switching to smartphones and this has made India into the world’s second largest market for smartphone makers globally. As more and more buyers have emerged in the country’s growing smartphones so have been the vendors offering various devices with different features and on different platforms such as Android, iOS and Windows Phone. It is therefore very important that the prospective smartphone buyer must be educated about certain aspects of the device before buying it.

While it is true that small screen smartphones are largely a thing of the past, the standard size for a smartphone is normally around 5 inches. There are many smartphones on the market that have a screen size of almost 6 inches, but that is totally on the preferences of the customers. There are some key points that you should always consider while buying a new smartphone if you are planning to use for a period of atleast 2-3 years without much hassles.

RAM: A smartphone’s RAM is very important to determine how the device would fare in day to day usage and multitasking. Different devices have different ways of utilising their available RAM and hence going by today’s standards a smartphone should have a minimum RAM of 1GB atleast. There are many phones in the market that offer upto 3 or 4GB of RAM, but I’m talking mostly of those devices that come below the range of 10K pricing. If you can spend more than 10K than you will probably be able to afford a device with 2GB RAM.

STORAGE: Phone storage is a very important factor while buying a smartphone. The internal storage that is available out of the box in a device is important as it affects the performance of the phone greatly. Users get frequent updates for the apps on their devices and they tend to take up more and more space of the phone’s storage. Hence it is important that when you buy a phone go for a device that gives you atleast 16GB of internal storage. Anything less than that is nothing short of a compromise and it will affect the optimum usage you can derive out of your device. Also, it is highly advisable to go for devices that give the option of expandable storage such as Micro SD card or OTG support. In case of no expandable storage, try to go for a device that offers larger storage such as 32 or 64 GB, although for those you may have to dish out some extra money.

CAMERA: Camera is a very important aspect of a smartphone today. Most smartphone makers compete among themselves to offer good camera specs in competitive price ranges. Although the game of megapixels if rather overrated for me, I would say that the most acceptable camera specs among smartphones today would be a 13MP camera in the back and a 5MP camera in the front. If you can increase your budget beyond 15K than you can get even better specs for the camera on your phone. The best cameras however come in the extremely high price categories. But always remember that your camera should have HDR mode, optical image stabilisation and various shooting modes that enhance your experience in a rich way.

BATTERY: Battery life is very important nowadays. Most smartphone users complain of battery life as their device fails to take them through most of the day and they end up worrying about charging them once in every few hours. Today many devices in the price range of around 15K are offering a battery life of upto 3000 mAh. But if you don’t want to go upto that sort of price bracket then atleast make sure that your battery has no less than 2000 mAh juice in it. Also you can save up your battery during the day by minimising the internet data consumption and managing it in a more profitable way.

SOFTWARE: Though some do not attach much importance to the software of the Operating System (OS) of the device, I feel it is quite important as having the latest OS can give you a great experience on your phone’s platform. Be it Android, iOS or Windows Phone, it always advisable to have their latest versions as they always bring something new and fresh with them in their successive versions as it greatly enhances your overall experience. While it rather depends on your smartphone maker on whether they give you future software updates or not, it is rather better to start with the latest OS in the market in all purposes.