[Tips] Checklist for Smartphone shopping

Posted at December 28th, 2008 under Apple iPhone, HTC, LG, Mobile Companies, Nokia, Samsung, Tip | 1 Comment »

Have you been planning too long for a smart phone in your pocket? Despite your real needs, smart phones mostly offer more than what you would want. As such, most phones deliver the best under certain categories. So, choosing the best one for you is entirely on your needs. If this is how it is put, then, this article is an utter redundancy.

Before you step into your stores, it is more than just your needs for which you are gonna buy. Know these before you find the perfect one for you. iPhone or BlackBerry or HTC (that one not much in the ads)?  or Nokia’s Symbian or Google’Android? Let the flamboyance of brand names be not a big issue either. Make a smart choice with your smart phone!

Broadly said, a smart phone is a portable electronic device which is capable of offering near-computer application experience with reasonable speed and simplicity, integrated multimedia (and imaging), good storage, wide choice of data communication modes, expandable nature in terms of applications, features (the intelligence factor; hence the word ‘smart’) and yes, it should also make and receive calls and text messages! So, smart phones are basic mobile phones at heart and modern hi-end multimedia gizmos on the outside.

Put in short, a smart phone is a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) with your mobile phone feature. Though closely right, it is not an exclusive business gadget either.

Here is a check list with which you get a sound knowledge and make a cream of the crop choice…

• Put first; select your phone that shares every functionality of a PDA

• Make sure the features provided by the phone are supported by your service provider.

• Choose the phone based on the OS it hosts. The operating system is also a vital feature. Though all the OSs are equally good. This choice can be made based on the purpose and also its support for 3rd party applications. As a business phone, blackberry can be your choice. Symbian and Windows Mobile are good too, while Android hosts an open source platform.

• Touch Screen Phones!?… Carried away by that stylus or finger tap interface usage?.. Fine, it is best to choose one phone that is good both with and without touch-enabled functionality. Meaning, find out whether your key pad also works and is in right ergonomics with your usage! Though the novel touch screen technologies are pullers in some way or other, it is generally a sound choice to find the one with nice key pads coming along with the touch tech features. A QWERTY phone or a numeric keypad? If your maximum usage is with call dials, go for numeric. If for e-mail typing or for exhaustive archiving, QWERTY is one that you can shift to. At the same time, your screen cannot prove good for exhaustive typing. Bear that in mind too.

• Keep an eye on Battery life. With multimedia and video capabilities, the battery life may be at stake.

• Find the storage capacity, memory slot and other peripheral add-ons. The smartphones are enhanced versions of normal mobile phones in terms of storage. Check how much built-in or internal memory they have, types of expansion slots for external memory and their maximum limits. Some cool phones like Nokia N91 even has a 4GB micro hard disk! Check if memory cards of cellphone model uses are cheap and widely available.

• Multimedia and File Format Support : Smartphones as they are known, boast of their features like built in music player, video player, image viewers and support for different audio and video codecs. Look for the number of different codecs supported, quality of playback, camera sensor and image reproduction quality and resolution. The phone should be fast enough while working with audio and video applications. Decent gallery and media browser should be there to make filing and browsing media files easy.

• Mobility and GPRS or 3G Support: Find out which data communication standards they comply with. Bluetooth is common and infrared is slowly vanishing. WiFi support is hot and available on the newer and advanced models. Also, GPRS and EDGE support is quite common with 3G WCDMA near-broadband speeds over the air now becoming mainstream.

• Check out on Warranty.

• Sure compare the prices and read some top reviews on the last best choices you have made.

Tags: Buying, Checklist, E Series, iPhone, KP500, N-Series, Omnia, Selection, Shopping, Smartphone, Tips, xPeria