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Saturday, May 21, 2011

The (almost) perfect guide for buying a cellphone

1. Can you live without a smartphone?

If the only use of your phone is to make calls, text and grab a few snaps and you can live being ridiculed for the rest of the life for not having a smartphone by quipping I'm smart so i don't need my phone to be smart, well you might just survive. But if you really need on the move light weight access to your mail, your docs and want to kill your boredom on the move with really fancy top notch games, then definitely go buy one.

2. Where do you live?

The single most important factor that decides what kind of phone you buy besides the cost and your need is your geographic location. Say you live in one of the third world countries (read India) which is not likely to be covered by 4G network anytime soon you definitely don't need a 4G phone. (You can scratch out EVO4 and IPhone 4 from your list now) Now if you live in an rural area currently covered by 2G , do a gut check whether 3G will be available anytime soon. If yes then only go for a 3G phone. If no settle down for a 2G phone, i don't think you would require a smartphone even as with slower network connectivity because of old age technology like EDGE you smart phone would be practically useless.

Services and speeds (courtesy: cnet.com)
 1G  2G  2.5G 
TechnologyAMPSGSM
CDMA
iDen
GPRS
1xRTT
EDGE
Speedsn/aLess than 20Kbps30Kbps to 90Kbps
FeaturesAnalog
(voice only)
Voice; SMS; conference calls; caller ID; push to talkMMS; images; Web browsing; short audio/video clips; games, applications, and ring tone downloads


 3G  3.5G  4G and beyond 
TechnologyUMTS
1xEV-DO
HSDPA (upgrade for UMTS)
1xEV-DV
WiMax*
Speeds144Kbps to 2Mbps384Kbps to 14.4Mbps100Mbps to 1Gbps
FeaturesFull-motion video; streaming music; 3D gaming; faster Web browsingOn-demand video; videoconferencingHigh-quality streaming video;
high-quality videoconferencing; Voice-over-IP telephony


*WiMax has been mentioned as a possible 4G technology, but no standards have been set.


3. What kind of hardware should your phone have?

The most important factors of the phones performance are its processor and its RAM. So you tend to think if the number of MHz (or GHz) of your phones processor is more then its certainly faster right? So what is there to think about it, you may presume? Well, you should really think about how much processing you require as faster the processor the more it drains your battery. If you would never play angry birds on your phone, and all you need are docs and email you dont really need to go for the 1, 1.2 Ghz monsters. But yes if HD games are for you then definitely check the spec sheet whether the phone has an add on GPU as well. And about RAM yes the higher the better (try the latest iNand maybe)

4. The brand factor....

So if the single factor that made you think you need a smartphone is that you want to show off to the gullible folks around  and you don't really care about performance, stop reading and go get a skin deep iphone.







5.Which operating system should your phone have?

a) Apps
So you shelled 20-40K INR on your phone. Then you need apps to do all the fancy stuff the phone boasts it can do. So you log on to the app store and you see every app you need tagged with a 10$ fee. Damn irritating rite? If you don't have all the money on the planet to invest on apps and don't really want to bear the burden of piracy  settle for a droid which has lots of free apps and open source support. If you have the money, well decide you want to see the same windows that adorns your computer choose a winphone or you want something trendy read the brand factor :P

b) Upgradability

So the company manufacturing your phone added some cool stuff to the operating system. They made it smarter smoother and power hungry. And now they are putting it on all new phones and you can't get it on yours. Congratulations the brand new phone you bought 6 months ago is outdated. Now you wouldn't have to deal with this if you are an android user. You can always upgrade and if you are the one who doesn't like change often stick to a winphone or an iphone.If you are a total geek who wants to push more and more into your phone get a droid. {for example my HTC hero came with android 1.5( with no bluetooth support even darn) and today i run android 2.3.4 in it (Bluetooth stack, DSP sound effects etc are few new features that were never in my phone when i bought it)}

6. Battery life

This is something most people ignore but trust me its really painful when you are on the move and your phone runs out of juice. Other than making the right hardware choice also look for power saving features in the phone like automatic brightness control, wifi sleep policy controls and the like so that you can keep your phone running longer. You don't want it to switch off when you are expecting the most important call of your life right?







7. Can you still make phone calls?

There is no use having a phone regardless of  its smart factor if you can't make phone calls with it.
 IPhone Antenna Issue

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