Smartphone buying guide 2019
Like other tech products on the market, the price variation is massive. Basically, it can be divided into three categories: budget-level, mid-range level, and flagship.So before buying phone, you have to consider your budget and reason behind buying phone like buying to capture good quality photo, playing heavy animated game, show up to other people that you have high brand phone or just for basic call and run youtube and facebook. Knowing how you tend to use your phone will pave a clear path towards the phone you should get. Don't ask shopkeeper which mobile is best in your budget because Shopkeepers will try to sell you the phones with bigger and better margin. So, before buying phone you should have fix idea which mobile is best in my budget and suit my reason to use phone.
1)Budget-level phone(under $100 or Nrs 15,000)
Budget phones can now run a basic app like normal apps like Facebook, YouTube will run without hiccups. It will be great if you get at least 2 GB memory and fingerprint sensor in this category. Colors S11, Huawei Y7, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, Xiaomi Mi 4X, Redmi 4A, OPPO A71 are some example of budget level phone. Budget-level phone prices ranges under $ 100 or Nepali 15,000.
2)Mid-range phones (between $100 to $400 or Nrs 15,000 to 45,000)
These kind of phones are better at one aspect and respectively bad at another. Say that there are two phones with a price tag of Rs. 30,000; one of the phones is made for better performance and the other is made for better camera experience. So these kinds of phones trade off some feature to excel at other features and maintain the price tag. It will great if you get at least 4 gb ram, dual camera gorilla glass above 3 which is dropped and scratch proved and phone that contains all this feature in 2019 is Redmi note 7 which is a lower mid-range phone. A lower mid-range phone price ranges between $100 to $250 and takes 60% of total mobile market.
3) Premium smartphone( above $400 or Nrs 50,000)
These phone have the latest trending features, come with very powerful specs and feature the best technology that the smartphone world can offer right now. The phones that fall in this list are Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S9, Galaxy Note 8, iPhones, OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 6, Huawei P20, iPhone X and more. Stereo Speakers, Wireless Charging and Water Resistance are best feature you can see in Premium range phones.
Following technical things should be considered before buying a phone.
1)Chipset (In The Qualcomm Snapdragon processors ‘4XX’ means budget level chipset, ‘6XX’ means mid-level chipset and ‘8XX’ means premium level chipset).
2)Display- in budget level HD(screen resolution 720*1080 ) is minimum, In mid-range phone Full HD(screen resolution 1080*1920 is minimum) and gorilla 4 and above it is drop and scratch proof.
3)Camera - Camera in Smartphone is digital so it depends on image processing system and little in hardware. Sensor size, lens aperture, megapixel and pixel size are some hardware relate things to consider while buying.
4)RAM - Not 1 GB RAM, 2 GB ram minimum, 3 GB ram average, 4 GB ram good, 6 GB ram super if you play the heavy game above it the same effect in 2019.
5)Battery- Minimum 3000 Mah
6)Andriod Vs Iphone- If you have a budget of premium phone and love iphone mobile go for Iphone but In andriod you have choice to choose any range phone. Dont choose device which have andriod version less than 7 as they are outdated in 2019.
7)Sensor - Every smartphone should have ambient light sensor(adjust screen brightness), proximity sensor, accelerometer and compass sensor. In mid-range and premium mobile also contains gyroscope( to watch virtual reality, augmented reality and 360 degree video in youtube), barometer, pedometer and IR blaster(control electromagnetic wave like Tv remote control).
Lets understand each point in detail
1) chipset
All the components you see in a motherboard of laptop and computer are integrated in single chip in mobile called soc(system of chip) or Chipset contains processor, GPU memory( ram, rom), connectivity module(wifi, Bluetooth,mobile tower), image processing system etc. Due to this reason you can change RAM, processor, hard disk and graphical processing system etc in laptop and computer but not in mobile because all the components are integrated in single chip. Basically there are snapdragon, mediatelk and exynos(samsung design) chipset in market. Among them Qualcomm snapdragon chipset is taken as best chipset for smartphone.
Qualcomm snapdragon 800 series is premium processors, 600 series is taken as mid-range processor where 400 series is a budget ranged processor.First digit of series is power of processor where rest 2 digit the greater the number, the greater the power of the processor. Like, “635” is more powerful than “625”. To compared different processor of same price phone you can type processor name and vs in middle of in google to compared in detail. for example:
Qualcomm SDM630 Snapdragon 630 vs MediaTek MT6763T Helio P23 vs Exynos 7870.
samsung j7 prime 2 contains Exynos 7870. , Oppo F5 Youth contains MediaTek MT6763T Helio P23 where snapdragon 630 is contains in many mid- range phones.
For seperate study of processor can be done by looking architecture, transistor size, core and speed of the processor. Architecture is designed of the processor provide by ARM company to processor manufacture company. It is just like design of our home before building home. Greater the number better the architecture of processor like cortex A57 better than A53.
Smaller the transistor size more number of transistor can be fill in same place and faster will be the flow of electron.So, smaller the size of transistor there will better performance of processor. Currently, in 2019, 10nm is smallest transistor size processor.Core- Core is basic unit of computation.there are dual(having two core), quad(having four core) and octa(having 8 core).Octa core is best for multitasking.
Speed- Speed is number of cycles perform in one second. In smartphone it is measure in GHZ. More the GHZ there will be better speed of processor like 2.2GHZ is faster then 1.8 GHZ.
NOTE to be a perfect processor there should be balance in architecture, transistor size, core and speed of the processor. So, we have to look all aspect.
2)Display
You interact with your phone with your display. The display is the outcome of all the hard work that goes inside a phone.The better the display, the better is your experience with your phone. Whatever your budget, you should never buy a phone with a display resolution less than HD which resolution of screen is 720*1280. Budget phones mostly come with an HD screen which is acceptable. But if you buy mid-range phone always buy Full HD which screen resolution is 1080*1920. Higher resolution means that the texts look sharper and the images look clearer. But it is also denoted by size of the screen not only resolution. Screen size is your wish but screen size and resolution of phone combined give ppi(pixel per inch) which determined how much texts look sharper and the images look clearer. In budget phone or low price smarphone choice phone which have more than 250 ppi and in mid-range and premium phone choose phone which have more than 350 ppi. In 2019, mid-range phone have more than 400 ppi and premium phone have more than 500 ppi.
We talk about Size and resolution of smartphone, lets talk about Type of Display.
AMOLED panel or an IPS LCD panel is two type of panel you found in all smartphone. IPS LCD panel can be found in all price range mobile where AMOLED panel is only found in many premium phone and some higher mid range phones.We see AMOLED panel mostly on Samsung phones. OnePlus phones and the iPhone X.AMOLED panels offer great contrast and richer colors than normal IPS LCD, it also is less power-hungry.
Finally most important to protect our phone from scratch and drop we have to see screen protection glass is present in smartphone or not. Mobile containing upto Corning Gorilla Glass 3 has scratch proved where above Gorilla glass 3 are scratch and drop proved. In 2019, we have latest Corning Gorilla Glass 6. Almost every premium phone contain Corning Gorilla Glass 4 or above version but there are also some mid-range phones that provide Gorilla glass 4 or above it for examples Redmi note 7 Redmi note 7 pro.
3)Camera
Camera in Smartphone is digital so it depends more on image processing system or camera software and little in its hardware. Current Google pixel 3 and then Iphone have best camera software or post image processing then other mobile company. So, Even having 12-megapixel camera in Pixel 3 and Iphone X they have best image then compare to other company 48 or higher megapixel camera phone. Sensor size, lens aperture, megapixel and pixel size are some hardware relate things to consider while buying new smartphone.
In brief, let me tell you how smartphone capture image, when you click photo in your phone the light from surrounding is send to the sensor of the phone which consists of megapixel through aperture(opening) of the lens. In end of this process, raw image is form which is large in large and send in camera software for post processing which boosts the colour, brightness,contrast ratio and make skin smooth and change into small size JPEG file which is dispay in screen. Here Google pixel 3 use AI and machine learning which bring more sharpness, brighness and contrast ratio in image like if you click sky image it will make it more blue and natural.
Sensor size, lens aperture, megapixel and pixel size are some hardware relate things to consider. Lens aperture is place from where light enter to the sensor of camera. Sensor size is measure by f/number. smaller the number larger will be aperture of smartphone and morelight can enter in sensor like f/1.7 > f/1.8> f/2.0.
Sensor size is denoted by 1/number" and smaller the number larger will be sensor size like
1/6">1/2">1/2.4". In the sensor, there will be many pixels which we call megapixel like 5 megapixels,12 megapixels, 23 megapixel etc which collect the actual light in form of single pixel coming from the aperture of lens. We should not only see the number of pixels call megapixel but also the size of each megapixel which is measured in µm. Like 1.6µm>1.4µm>0.8µm.Bigger the each pixel size more clear will be image
While looking hardware of camera also compared Sensor size, lens aperture, megapixel and pixel size with eachother as they are in balance if they only have megapixel more in number but aperture of lens, sensor size and each pixel size is small.
in some mid-range and many premium smartphones you can aspect dual,triple camera which helps you to capture portrait image making blur to the background and also to capture wide-angle image, OIS which stable the image when you move your hand while capuring image and at last slow video recording at 1080p@30/60/120fps.
Note for 4k record in smartphone your phone should have atleast 12 megapixel camera and your processor should support it.
4)Battery
There are two types of battery in smartphone lithium ion and lithium polymer. Lithium polymer are lighter, thin,high energy density and cost 10-30% more then lithum ion.Lithium polymer is used in all budget phone. Lithium polymer are mainly use in most mid range and premium ranged phone to make smartphone more slim. But battery performance is determined by mah(milliamp Hour) is a unit that measures (electric) power over time. It is commonly used to measure the energy capacity of a battery. Minimum 3000 mAh is required for decent battery performance so dont buy smartphone which battery is less then 3000mAh.
5) RAM
Bigger RAM means better multitasking performance. Or, the phone can continue running more apps in the background if it has a larger RAM. But bigger doesn’t always mean better. How the manufacturer has tuned the OS to use the RAM on the phone greatly affects performance. Like iPhones do not have spacious RAMs.iPhone 7 had just 2GB of RAM but the Galaxy S8 had 4 GB of RAM. Yet, their performance was comparable. So, RAM management is more important than sheer specification. IN android,DO NOT buy a phone with 1 GB of RAM. You just won’t be able to use that phone properly in 2018. 2 GB RAM minimum, 3 GB RAM good, 4 GB ram great, 6 GB RAM is excellent only in case that you cant change RAM in smartphone like laptop and computer and if you load many heavy game and app at same time.Above it no need in case of 2019.
6) SENSOR
Sensor in smartphone is a sensing device or hardware which is installed in the smartphone to gather information for various purpose.Every smartphone should have ambient light, proximity, accelerometer,compass sensor and GPS sensor.Function of ambient light sensor is to adjust the display brightness, which at the end saves the battery power and life too. The function of this proximity sensor is to detect how close your smartphone’s screen is to your body. When you use your smartphone, it detects the position of ear with respect to screen and turns off the light of screen and saves battery. Also proximity sensor stops the accidental touch, unwanted input during talk.The main function of accelerometer is to sense the changes in the orientation of smartphone with respect to datum and adjust the orientation to suits the viewing angle of operator like portrait to landscape or landscape to portrait mode when we change the orientation of phone/camera.We all know that the function of compass is to give right direction with respect to the north-south pole of earth by use of magnetism. GPS is a sensor which tracks the target or 'navigate' the things by map or picture with the help of GPS satellites.
In many mid range and premium smartphone also provide fingerprint, gyroscope, padometer, barometer IR blaster sensor and Face detection in their smartphone.Here Gyroscope function is to maintain and control the position, level or orientation based on the principle of angular momentum which helps to watch virtual reality, augmented reality and 360 degree video in youtube. IR blaster sensor is used to control Electromagnetic wave like Tv remote control.
