HOW TO BUY A GOOD SMARTPHONE.

According to statistica.com there are currently over 2.1 billion smart phone users in the world. This is estimated to climb over to 2.87 billion by 2020 according to the same source. However digitaltrends.com estimates even higher. They estimate to about  6.1 billion smartphone users by the year 2020. That's huge, not so? This according to them is about 70% of the world population. With all these demography and stats it therefore means that the smartphone is definitely a favorite piece of device.

WHAT IS A SMARTPHONE?
Probably you are thinking what am thinking. Why the prefix smart? They are called smartphones basically because asides the primary function of a phone which is to make,receive calls and send text messages there is more they still have to offer. I like putting it this way smartphones are a mini extension of the normal computer into a more pocket friendly, easier handling way however trading off some very powerful features of the standard computer system. But with enough processing power to handle the many daily on-the-go activities required of it by its user.

Hands-on of the Samsung galaxy S6 edge series. A very powerful smartphone.

HOW TO GET A GOOD SMARTPHONE.

As the saying goes, one man's food is another man's poison. This adage applies so much here in that at times what seems to interest one throws the other off. So i always tell people whenever they ask me about how to get a good smartphone, that it boils down to what you want out of it. However the following will definitely help in guiding you.

THE FIVE STARS OF A GOOD SMARTPHONE

1.Build quality

2.Performance

3.Display

4.Battery Life

5.Camera

BUILD QUALITY.

This has to do with the general outlook of the phone. Its appearance and form factor. Generally the hardware make up of the device. It is the first impression you get about a smartphone when you see any. The build quality answers questions like; Is it well designed? Does it appeal to people's aesthetics and tastes? Does it look durable? Does it have a premium feel and many more. Here I advise you go for those with very a durable finish. Metallic Unibody design is the trendy thing on board  now. This is when it seems as if one single metal jacket is used throughout the phone's chasis. This gives a very solid finish to a smartphone for easy handling. It is used on flagships like the Tecno Phantom 5, Innjoo Maxx 3, Infinix Hot S and Note 3.

Asides this, you can look out for the polycarbonate finish which is scratch resistant to higher degree than the metallic finishes. Featured on the Lenove P-70A.

Also advisable is the Kevlar finish even though it is a very limited design. It features a scratch resistant rubber like finish. Very soft to feel and can be designed into many patterns. It is used on devices like the older Motorola Droid Razzr and the more recent Infinix Zero 2.

The Infinix Zero 2 adorned with a Kevlar design.

DISPLAY

Another area worth taking a look at is the display. Smartphones come with either the AMOLED display technology or the IPS LCD. Let me explain something important here. Either of the two technologies are just OK. Even though they have strengths and weaknesses. For the AMOLED, it is thinner, so it is used in very slim phones. Samsung makes use of it in their Galaxy flagships to achieve a very slim thickness oulook. Another thumps up is that they require less light to lit up the LED cells, so can be power conservative. However their brightness level is not so high. The LED cells age and die with time, a very long time though. Employed in Motorola Droid Razzr series and Samsung Galaxy series.

For the IPS LCD variants, they are the best type of LCD display. This is because of their high colour accuracy levels, high contrast ratio or brightness level and very wide viewing angles. But they consume more power in order  to achieves such high brightness. Used in virtually all premium smartphones.

Samsung Galaxy S4 sporting AMOLED side by side with  HTCone M8 on IPS-LCD.

PERFORMANCE

No doubt this is the powerhouse of whatever is happening inside the device. There isn't much to haggle about here. This is because the average smartphone's processor is just OK. However what you should always look for is the RAM backing it up. Anything below 1GB of RAM is from the evil one. Did you just laugh?...lol but it's not funny, because anything below 1GB ram on a smartphone is an invitation of complaints. Even though on some specially optimized devices like the iPhone 4 and some Lumia devices, 512MB did everything smoothly.

Most smartphones make use of the Qualcomm snapdragon Kryo and more recently the Krait. Samsung uses the Exynos. Infinix, Tecno, Lenovo, Innjoo use Mediatek. Apple uses Cortex Cyclone and more recently the Typhoon.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Chipset.

BATTERY LIFE

You can agree with me that even though this might not pose as much of a problem where there is constant power availability. But that is still not the case in most of our homes for now.

Therefore battery reliability is very important.Battery technologies are either made as Li-Po(Lithium Polymer) or Li-On(Lithium-Ion). There isn't much of a competition among the duo. This is because they do same work. Except that the Li-Po is lighter in weight by a little fraction though and can be made into various shapes asides rectangles. Smartphone batteries can be placed as removable or non-removable. The latter is mostly used recently. The battery monster for now is the Gionee M5 beefed up with a monster size battery of 6020maH. Others are the Tecno L8 with 5050maH and the Infinix Note 3 which has 4500maH.

Powerbank in use because of low battery.

CAMERA

I like calling it the ladies part. This is because most ladies take quite a lot of pictures (selfies, groupies, wefies and all other "fies"). To make a good camera choice, just start from 8MP for back and at least 5MP for for front. Above is even better. However asides that, good lightning conditions matter a lot and also stabilization while pressing the shutter button.

Some smartphone makers have really distinguished themselves in this area. They include Samsung's Galaxy, Nokia' Lumia now Microsoft's Lumia and Sony's Xperia.

Samsung uses the Britecell lens technology. Sony employs their G-lens technology. On the Lumia we find the Carl Zeiss optics. Even though a bit high priced but smartphones from any of these guys, does the camera job pretty well. For now the highest pixelated smartphone is the Nokia Lumia 1020 with a 41MP camera.

The Nokia Lumia 1020 hands-on.

I hope it helped. Don't forget to leave comments down below. Am off to write the next post.