Smartphone buying guide: Important factors to consider

Your smartphone is perhaps your most valuable possession. It is your link to every facet of your life, from social to work, from entertainment to creating memories. If you are looking to replace your smartphone, choosing the right one is essential. This is a device you want to keep for at least a couple of years, so you need to select wisely.

Smartphones can also be expensive, so picking a handset that meets your expectations is a good investment. Below you can read our complete smartphone buying guide, which walks you through the most important factors to consider when buying a new phone.

Before getting into the details, there are three important notes to make. Firstly, using smartphone comparison sites can help you find the device for you by organizing mobile phones based on your needs. Secondly, many smartphone buying guides focus on factors like performance, and while that is important, there are other more vital factors to consider.

Thirdly, if you are shopping in the flagship market, your considerations may change. In truth, most flagships are much of the same. Whether it is the top end Samsung, Apple, Huawei, or any other smartphone, you are guaranteed an excellent camera, amazing battery, stunning screen, and beefy battery.

Flagship shopping comes down to preference in areas such as design, or incremental benefits of one smartphone over another. When you drop below the flagships, to the mid-range and budget phones, that’s where it gets really interesting.

Below we will touch all the bases, starting with the most important factors:

How to Buy the Best Smartphone

Battery Life All the Way

We get it, battery life is hardly the most exciting metric when considering which smartphone to buy, but it may be the most important. The reality is the smartphone market is currently full of amazing devices. Even budget devices costing under $200 can provide solid performance and a decent screen appearance these days. What those low-end handsets do not always offer is a good battery or camera.

That is why we rank those factors highly. In terms of battery life, you should look for a device that delivers at least one full day of juice consistently. Remember, the size of the battery (mAh) does not always mean more battery life. That is because factors like screen power, performance, and operating system affect how the battery drains.

Camera Matters

Or if you are not a photographer, maybe it doesn’t. However, even if you are not that much into cameras, this is a smartphone component that can highlight which devices are better. Even for casual users, you will take a lot of photos with your smartphone camera… some of them will be important snaps of family members and other memories.

As you probably know, we are in the era of the multi-lens camera module on smartphones. Now even budget devices have more than one lens. You can find the primary lens that delivers the most megapixels, while also zoom lenses, wide-angle lenses, and portraits lenses. If you are especially interested in photography, the phones with the biggest selection of lenses and camera software features will be more appealing.

For those who just want a solid smartphone camera, you should look for features like optical image stabilization (OIS), HDR mode, 4K video shooting. Lower budget devices may lack some or all of these tools, but you can still find good cameras from companies like Samsung, Nokia, and Huawei.

Display Excellence

Screen technology is one area where smartphone manufacturers try to wow customers. Each year we are given increasing numbers such as megapixel count (PPI), brightness gains (LIT), and screen resolution increases (Ultra HD, 4K, etc.). When buying a new smartphone, you want a good combination of all those things.

After-all, you will spend 90% of your time on the device looking at the screen. If you can combine a solid PPI with good brightness and a high resolution, then you are likely to have a good screen experience. You do not have to pay flagship money either. Even a low-end device can have a good display, provided you buy a handset with at least 1080p (Full HD) resolution.