Things to Consider Before Buying a Mobile Phone

It’s late on a Friday night in a café and the world is your oyster. You’ve just finished writing the latest article on your blog, and you want to spend some time reading other articles and catching up with friends. But what’s this? Your phone is dead! And it’s too late to go down to the corner store for a charger or find one of that handy USB plug-ins that looks like wall sockets.

1. The importance of having a good smartphone

Smartphones are an important part of our lives. For many people, smartphones have replaced computers as the main way to browse the internet and get online. For bloggers, there are a lot of ways to use your smartphone to help you run your blog and your business.

It’s a fairly common misconception that as you use your smartphone, your information will start to suck. In reality, your information is already being recorded and analyzed by your smartphone’s camera, and as you use your smartphone, you’ll be able to see what your information looks like and how it’s being used to target you.

In addition, better and more privacy-focused features are continually released to your smartphone, and according to the researchers at Cambridge University, people need their smartphones to be able to use them safely. Privacy concerns surround the way that companies are gathering and using your private data, and just like your computer, your smartphone should be used safely and securely. Regardless of what type of smartphone you use, be mindful of how you use your personal information whenever you’re using it.

Smartphones have created a lot of misinformation about how they are implementing and tracking mobile data. According to the FCC, when you use your smartphone “including the wireless portion of a mobile telephony service,” your phone records the browsing and content on the sites you visit. This is called “app tracking” and has been around since the very beginning of mobile phones; sites know how often you visit their apps and what content you might be interested in and can use data from these sites to improve their products.

These sweeping data collection practices have to lead to a lot of privacy concerns. When you use your smartphone to look up a recipe on Google, that data is given to Google for Google to improve its search results. This tracking is called “apples-to-apples” data sharing, and according to Federighi, the CEO of iMessage, when iMessage is sending this information, it isn’t sharing anything personally identifiable.

2. The specs you should look for in your next smartphone

Find out which specs are important to you and which ones are just nice to have. Then, look for a smartphone that hits those specs. For example, if you want a big screen, you’ll need to find a big-screen phone, like the iPhone 6 Plus or the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. But if you want a 4K screen, you’ll probably save yourself the pain by finding a phone with an IPS display, like the iPhone XR.

In general, spec-for-spec, the highest performing phones are around the $1,400 mark. A mid-range phone will probably run you a little more at $1,500. A budget phone is only good at a fraction of that, with devices like the $200 Moto G (a good phone that has been released almost a year ago and is a true budget device to take on the road) being the most common example. If you’re trying to save a couple of hundred bucks, you can save a little money by going with something in the $700–800 range.

For the performance-hungry enthusiast or the heavy media consumer, $700 is the sweet spot. Now there are a few budgets that fall outside of that range and are very good choices. Those phones are the $600-$700 range and the Sony Xperia 1 II and the $700 Samsung Galaxy A51. Still, don’t go too far below that if you want to save some money and still be somewhat covered.

Depending on your budget, you’ll be looking for a phone that has a high screen-to-body ratio, good battery life, thin bezels, and good performance.

Also check out, Easy Samsung FRP tool

As of right now, we’re seeing premium Android phones with a ratio of at least 90% on all aspects. And starting at around that ratio, we’re seeing phones like the LG V30, Huawei P30 Pro, the Google Pixel 3a, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 20. And we’re also starting to see the introduction of super-high ratio phones from companies like Xiaomi, OnePlus, Vivo, Honor, Oppo, and others. Remember, you’ll also see phones with a ratio ranging between 86%–90%.

3. What to look for in terms of battery life and screen size

When you’re looking for a new laptop, you want to pay attention to the battery life and the size of the screen. A good rule of thumb is to get a laptop that lasts all day without needing a charge. You can also look at the size of the screen. There are lots of different laptops nowadays with bright, high-definition displays.

You want a laptop that’s a little bit bigger than outgoing models, that lets you multitask a little bit, and look slightly less like a piece of furniture. If you’re in the UK, you can look for a laptop under six inches (15.93cm) high by four inches (10.16cm) wide. These laptops usually have a minimal bezel on the screen, and they have a lot of ports, so they might not even have dedicated graphics cards or wireless networking chipsets. Extreme students, who don’t necessarily need a lot of processing power, might well want a smaller laptop with fewer ports.

If you’re in the USA, you’ll either go for a laptop with at least 16GB of memory (that’ll usually be an i3 processor, overclockable to 4.5GHz, and 8GB of RAM), or one that has either an Nvidia GPU or at least 8GB of GDDR6 memory. Look for laptops that cost under $2,000.

To decide which size laptop you want, start by taking the screen size into account. You could start with something like a 15.6-inch laptop with a 3,840-by-2,160 resolution, or something like a 14-inch laptop with a 3,840-by-2,000 resolution but with a 4,400-by-1,800 screen. The higher the resolution, the better the color reproduction and the larger the screen can be stretched without stretching the whole thing. If you want a small screen that’ll go almost anywhere you might look into a laptop with an IPS screen, whether it’s a laptop with 1800–1849 pixels or the more common 21:9 ratio. If the screen is too small for you, or it gets in the way of the computer chair you’re sitting in, you’ll need a bigger and better laptop.

4. How to choose the right network provider for your needs

After an hour or so, you’re rattling between articles on your phone when you hear it. The sound of college kids arguing in the background. You glance up and see your partner with an oversized cup in one hand and an order of fries in the other. You glance up and see that you’re the only other passenger in the room and that the back wall of the room is occupied by another table.

Nice guy bravado? Check. The burly man with a tremendous beard and a big ego? You bet he is. So you just nod and look out at the sea of students, now in their final week of college exactly as much as you are.

You both order your fries, and you sit still and relaxed for a moment as you take in all the sights and sounds. This is a certain age (sorry early twenties AARP) of American society, and in this particular cafe, it’s perfectly acceptable to bump elbows with strangers and engage in conversations about absolutely anything. There are other tables with empty chairs, and large groups of older adults collaborate on everything from child abuse to relationships.

You both sit and eat evenly-sized fries as you watch people move across the room freely, enjoying conversations about absolutely anything and just about everyone. Studious interaction? Check. Professional success? Check.

Conclusion

You’ve probably been through this scenario before, and you know how frustrating it can be when your phone dies on you at the wrong moment in time. This blog will help you avoid that frustration by teaching you about the features that are most important to think about before buying any new phone.

When you’re buying a smartphone, you’re not just buying a phone. You’re also deciding on what type of service you’re going to get. This plug-in can come with so many different options, and some are better than others.

Your user interface might be able to present you with so many choices that you end up swiping around on your phone instead of making a conscious effort to pick one. But to make your experience pleasant and successful, you have to know which one is the most appropriate for you and your needs. And like every choice in life, there’s a tradeoff — one of them is better than the other.

Choosing hardware is an important part of any phone buying process. If you want that new shiny iPhone, you’re going to need to spend a good chunk of money upfront. It’s for that reason that the specifications — specifically the model, number of cores, RAM, and storage size — matter so much. And while it’s possible to get something with half the features of a newer device, it’s not always worth the money — especially if you plan on using it for a long time.

You also need to consider what kind of screen size you prefer. At times, manufacturers will simply fall back on a previous design that’s more advanced than what you have now, but it’s not worth spending extra on that kind of tech when it might not match what you prefer. In any case, it’s never a good idea to purchase something that you can’t use because the manufacturer doesn’t provide it in your country or region.

It might be tempting to purchase a high-end device and leave the internals to be determined by the software.