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How to Choose the Best Smartphone!
Are you looking for the best smartphone out there? A lot of
people are searching on this topic, however, it’s really not an easy
question to answer! What does it mean to be “the best”
anyway? I think that you should be suspicious of anyone who
tries to tell you that a particular smartphone is the best.
The real question needs to be: “What is the best smartphone
for you?” There are so many options out there, and a ton of
variables that play into what makes a smartphone the best fit for you,
just as there’s no right answer regarding what’s the best car.
The focus of this site is Prepaid
Wireless, including many Prepaid
Wireless Internet related topics, and of course Prepaid
Smartphones. If you’re interested in learning about
what prepaid smartphones are currently available in the U.S. you can
skip right to the Smartphone
Comparison chart, or you can read more about What
is a Smartphone. But even if you’re not interested
in prepaid smartphones at all, the following discussion applies to both
postpaid wireless, as well as prepaid, no contract wireless smartphones!
So how can you go about deciding what’s the best smartphone for
you? I think we can break it down into the following areas:
Form Factor
Form factor is about size and shape – How big or small do you want your
smartphone to be? Smaller is convenient when it comes to
putting it in your pocket and holding it in your hand, however, larger
usually means a larger screen, which allows you to see more information
at once, and makes for easier reading and Web browsing.
However, note that a larger screen can make it harder to navigate the
device with one hand, either requiring two hands for balance/support,
or to make pinching/zooming easier without dropping the phone.
Keyboard
- Virtual
Keyboard - Do you want a virtual keyboard, which means you
usually will have a larger screen? Keep in mind that typing
is usually harder (or at least harder to get used to!) than a physical
keyboard, and when the keyboard is displayed, you lose a lot of screen
real estate to display content. In other words, you get a
larger screen, however,
when inputting data, you usually end up with a smaller screen!
- Physical
Keyboard – A physical keyboard can be much easier to use,
and allow access to a lot of shortcuts when navigating around the
phone. It can be in a monolith/candy bar style where the
keyboard is under the screen and always accessible (like the
traditional BlackBerry or legacy Palm Treo). These keyboards
tend have keys that are a little more raised/shaped, making them easier
to use than their sliding counterparts. Or it can slide out
either horizontally or vertically. While most people see
vertical sliding keyboards as being cramped, I actually find that
horizontal keyboards have the keys too far apart, which tends to slow
me down. But be careful of poorly designed vertical sliding
keyboards, which can make it difficult to reach the top row if your
fingers are such that the bottom portion of the phone’s screen/body
interferes with hitting the keys. This is no doubt a very
personal decision/preference.
Battery Life
While smartphones are great and wonderful machines, they suck up
battery life while doing the amazing data intensive things that they
can do! Many of the newest smartphones actually have
processors that are faster than laptops that I used in the
mid-90s! The challenge here is that most smartphones don’t
have a wide range of battery life considerations. In other
words, they’ll all pretty bad! Gone are the days where you
can go weeks, or even days without charging your phone. In
fact, I wouldn’t suggest leaving for the weekend without a charger, and
I personally don’t leave the house without either a car charger or a
USB or wall charger in my bag!
Unfortunately, you can’t really judge the battery life by the size of
the device, or even the size of the battery itself. A large
phone can have so many other features packed into it (ex. front and
rear facing cameras, flash, Bluetooth, WiFi, Radio, Gyroscope,
Accelerometer, etc., that you can’t assume any apparently extra space
due to the size of the phone/screen means that it has a larger
battery. And even if it does have a larger battery, all of
these extra features may require the larger battery because it’s
sucking up even more power! You can read the battery specs
that the carrier reports (ex. talk time and standby time), however,
even that can be deceiving because there are so many variables in terms
of what types of applications you’re using. I often look to
third party manufacturers that sell higher capacity batteries that I
can buy. Though they are typically fairly expensive, so keep
that in mind as well as you decide what is the best smartphone for you.
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