Smartphone Buying Guide

afp gallery Mar 28, 2022

Picking the best mobile for yourself could be tricky and confusing. Here's a comprehensive mobile buying guide on how to choose right smartphone for yourself.

Smartphones have snaked their way into almost every living moment of our technologically-fueled lives. More people are buying smartphones, and the number of options is also increasing. Choosing a smartphone from such an overwhelming list of options might get confusing, so we made a guide that helps you pick the best smartphone for your needs.

SMARTPHONE PERFORMANCE: PROCESSOR AND RAM

Your smartphone processor, also known as the chipset or the SoC, is the component that is responsible for just about everything functioning on your smartphone. It is essentially the brain of the system, and most of these processors also come equipped with AI capabilities that essentially make your smartphone as ‘smart’ it is today.

A capable processor not only allows your device to function seamlessly but is also capable of enhancing other factors. One example is image processing. Samsung phones, as an example, comes in two variants - one hosting the Snapdragon chipset (the latest one being Snapdragon 865+). In contrast, the other one employs Samsung’s in house Exynos processor (the latest being Exynos 990). Some reviewers have explicitly stated that there is a tangible difference in not just the processing power of the two variants, the Snapdragon being much snappier, but also the image-processing abilities.

So, when you choose your smartphone, it is integral to know what processor you’re getting along with it since the performance directly correlates with it. Popular ones include Snapdragon, Apple A13 Bionic, Exynos 990, and Kirin 990. Apple processors are known for their raw computing power, and Snapdragon processors are the closest equivalent in the Android realm. You also have lower-powered processors for mid-range and budget devices such as the Snapdragon 730 and 730G, Snapdragon 675, MediaTek Helio G90T and G85, and more, that are commonly found in lower-priced 2020 smartphones. If you’re on a budget and don’t mind sacrificing some power to save money, consider buying phones with one of these processors since they drive down costs quite a bit.

A GOOD DISPLAY

Smartphone display sizes seem to be ever-increasing and are continually pushing the boundary of what we’d expect a smartphone display size to be. They’ve reached the ‘phablet’ realm with displays even reaching up to 6.9-inches!

However, in the age where content is being consumed increasingly on our pocket devices (hard to call them that now), this may not be a bad thing. We suggest anything above 5.7 inches so you can really immerse yourself into games and media. As far as display types go, you have LCD and AMOLED displays. AMOLED displays have variants such as OLED or Super AMOLED (in the case of Sam- sung) and have better contrast and darker blacks. They also assist in saving battery since they turn off all the black pixels on the phone to display ‘true black’.

Next, you also have various resolutions such as Full HD, Full HD+ Quad HD. While QHD does provide crisper images, the difference between FHD and QHD is not too jarring, especially to the untrained eye. You should also check the screen protection on your device. Gorilla 5 and 6 are usually used in current-generation smartphones, and they provide reasonable protection for your glass sandwiches. However, we still recommend a case strongly.