Welcome to easyBLOG!

For the next  few weeks, we will cover topics and provide you with tips that will help you choose a phone that fits your lifestyle and  your personality, and also how to get the most out of your investment. 

For this first installment, we will focus on selecting a device that is right  for you.

Choosing Your Phone

To begin, it is important to determine whether you want an Android or  an iPhone. The choice, between the two,  for the most part, is usually a personal preference,  therefore we will not cover the technical aspect of these two choices since it is beyond the scope of this  discussion. 

To help you choose, we will follow a three-step approach, i.e., budget, research, and features.

Step 1: Determine How Much You Are Willing To Spend

Money good. But money fly, too quick.

Decide  on how much you are willing to spend, and with your budget in mind,  find out what  phones are within your reach.  Get a  bit of information about those phones and see if  they have some of   the features that are important to you.  To determined whether a feature is important or not, think about how your experience would be if those features were missing from your phone. If a feature is that important, then you will be happy to pay good money to get it.

Step 2: Do Your Homework

It is better to be right than lucky.

Before you spend any money, you need to  be sure of what you need in a phone.  I have listed what is more important to me (as a person)  in order of priority in the table below. They are what  I look for before I pick up and pay for any device. To simplify this discussion, lets focus only on the first two.

Do your research on the phone before you buy it. Don’t just base your decision on information from one website (and worse still,  information from only the manufacturer’s website), but  go through multiple sites. Talk to people with the same device model and ask them about their personal experience (if possible). 

I understand that my list and the  priorities will not be the same as everyone’s, but it is  just to guide you when you create your own list and assign your own priorities.  

Step 3: Thinking About the Features

Responsiveness

You can only move as fast as your Smartphone.

For many people, it may come as a surprise that  Responsiveness is on top of my list. However, if you get to know me as a person, my choice might make more sense to you.  When I say "Responsiveness", I mean how quickly the device responds to  input (both user and system). I wants apps to launch quickly when I select them,  and run smoothly when I am using them.

Even though the processor speed does impact responsiveness, they are not exactly the same as "responsiveness". Also, in general, smartphones, just like computers, slow down when loaded with a large number of apps and data, however some are able to deal with the situation better than others if they have a decent amount of memory and a decent processor. In the end, responsiveness, whether  acceptable or not, depends on the user's perspective.

Battery Life

You are as social as your battery life.

Battery life  may be looked at in two different ways:

Firstly, (true)  life of a battery is  from the day the phone was first powered on to the day that the battery needs replacement because it is no longer able to retain charge.

Secondly, battery life can also be defined as how long it takes the battery to run out (die) after it has been fully charged.

We will focus on the second definition  now since it is more relevant to our discussion. We will save the first one  for the next time.

Naturally, the bigger the battery size, the longer the phone will last before a  recharge is needed (after it has been fully charged). However,  it is not adequate to choose one device over another based solely on battery size. Battery size only tells you part of the story. How long your battery lasts ultimately comes down to how efficient (or inefficient) the smartphone is.. In layman terms, what I mean is:

“Just because one device has a bigger battery does not guarantee that it will last longer.”

Besides the battery size (the "mAh" stated by the manufacturer), it is also important to  take into account the  reviews from neutral websites and from direct user experience. Don’t pay too much attention to the battery life as  defined by manufacturers since some of them tend to inflate their specification quite a bit to make them look good.

Once you have gone through assessing the  important features against the phones within your  budget, you will be in a better  position to select the phone that best meet your needs. Your choice has to reflect who you are, what you do with it, and what you like. Though, looks are important, it should never be the most important factor in your quest for a phone that best suits your needs.