With the hundreds of smartphones out there, we don’t know always what to choose. So I would like to share with you some ideas on how to choose your phone, since I am the one to choose most of the phones that my family buys.
The first thing you need to check is what do you want your phone for?
Are you a casual user? A heavy user? A gamer? A businessman/woman? A texter?
What do you need? What is useless for you?
Do not fall for the advertisements and the show-offs, sometimes we pay 200$ and it’s the phone we need, sometimes we pay 1000$ and the phone does not serve us like we want it to.
For example, there are so many new features now: the smart scroll eye tracking option, the fingerprint unlock feature, the high resolution camera, the big screens, the higher screen resolutions, the better front cameras, the extra gear you can use, etc… But which of these options do you really need? Choose first the options that you really need. Here’s an example:
– LTE or 3G? Well depends on the network you are using and your data plan. If your company is still mostly on 3G or has a weak 4G network, remember, within a year you might change phones, do you really want to pay extra for a feature you won’t use that much?
Be a bit on the cheap side, because you need to know, what you will spend now, you might regret it later. Just like when you buy a car because it looks fancy, but then discover that its gear breaks down every 4000miles. You do not need to add useless gadgets to your life, you need something useful that will last, even if it’s not the last release.
Smartphones don’t have a long lifespan, it’s a short-term investment, for a year or two. Rare are the cases where it would last any longer. The probability that you will resell it isn’t that high, as most of us end up with a broken screen, bad non-removable battery, and fast heated device or bugged device. If you actually sell it, it will lose of its value a rather large percentage, in any case it will be less than when you bought it. So how much will you be willing to invest in this item? Actually, the more important question is how much can you afford? Phone companies know that people will be pursuing the latest gadgets even if they have to pay for them in loans, which gives them room to make phones more expensive, as no matter what, they will be able to sell them! Why let them take the whole sum? You can get the same gadget after 6 months 30% off the price, and it’s still going to work for you as it was going to work 6 months ago, minus the loan, and perhaps, you might like its mini brother, as most companies are now releasing a smaller, slightly less endowed, more cost and size efficient version.
Bottom line: do not make having the latest smartphone a priority, it will hardly last with you, and if you are afraid you won’t be hip enough, it’s not about the phone you have, it’s not a small device that will make you cool or not. That’s just plain shallow.
Hopeful Fatalist 