There are claims that approximately 1.5 billion smartphones are bought yearly. Of the 1.5 billion, about 70% of them are assumed to be Android phones. Irrespective of the kind, some features are crucial and have to be considered thoroughly when you want to buy a phone. They are:

Screen and Display

Most phones come in a range of 5.5 inches to 6.5 inches. It is however not enough to only consider the size. You have to also check if the screen has an HD (High Definition), or QHD (Quad High Definition) feature.

HD and QHD mean that the displayed images and videos on the phone appear sharper and clearer. Based on this, a QHD screen is better than an HD screen. The phone’s brightness and lighting also matter as it makes it easier to see the screen when you’re outdoors. AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) panels are better than LCD (Liquid-Crystal Display) panels for better brightness.

Fun Fact: some new phones in the market come with a feature called ‘one-hand’. This feature reduces the phone screen to about three-quarters of the normal screen. This is an especially handy feature when a portion of your screen is bad, or you want to operate the phone without using both hands.

Camera

A lot of selfie lovers usually lookout for phones with higher megapixels. However, some other features that should be taken into consideration are dual lenses which in a layman term, means the phone has two cameras, and optical image stabilization which offers less blurry images, and sharper videos.

Battery

The battery life of phones is becoming more important than it used to. This phone feature is one of the major determinants in getting a good phone. Phone battery capacities are measured in mAh (milliampere-hour), and vary widely depending on the model, brand, and function of the phone. A new phone battery of 3000mAh should last for at least 17 hours with normal usage. Higher battery capacities can last as long as 24 hours without charging. If you’re going for lower battery capacity, it is advised that the phone is not overworked often.

Storage

Phone storage is divided into two – the RAM (Random Access Memory), and ROM (Read Only Memory). Simply put, the RAM is the phone’s main storage that stores short-term data, applications, and the operating system (OS), while the ROM is the internal storage of the phone that stores data permanently, and can store files like videos, songs, documents, etc. A phone with 3GB or 4GB RAM will work faster than a phone with 2GB. For ROM, if the phone will be used to store a lot of large-sized files, opt for a phone with 32GB ROM or higher, as opposed to getting 16GB or less. In a nutshell, the higher the RAM of a phone, the faster it is, and the higher the ROM, the more storage it has.

Fun fact: a phone can normally not work with a memory card higher than its ROM. This means that if you have a phone with 8GB ROM, the highest size of memory card compatible with that phone is 8GB; anything higher won’t work.

Operating System (OS)

Another important phone feature is its OS. The operating system could be the iOS (which is for iPhones) or android OS (which comes with Android phones). The iOS automatically comes with iPhones, with the highest one currently being version 12.4. Any iOS less than this can be upgraded to meet up with the new one. The Android OS has different names and versions which comes from modifications, improvements, and upgrades over the years. Currently, it is assumed that the best Android OS is ‘pie’, which is also called ‘Android 9.0’. Other lesser but still effective versions are oreo (Android 8.0), Nougat (Android 7.0), marshmallow (Android 6.0), Lollipop (Android 5.0), etc. For a good Android phone experience, and to reduce the possibility of your phone being slow, do not go for an Android version lower than lollipop.

Processor

A phone’s processor is measured in GigaHertz (GHz). This phone feature more or less determines the phone’s processing speed and can be considered as the brain of the phone. The average processor is about 1GHz, with some even being as high as 2.2GHz. When it comes to the processor’s GigaHertz, higher is better.

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