By One of your goals this holiday might be to upgrade your devices or gift someone close. Unfortunately, it is possible to get confused about what kinds of specs in smartphone you really should go for. Regardless of your budget, here are some features you must look out for if you’re thinking of buying a new phone this holiday.
Top 5 Features To Look out for Before Buying a Phone this Festive Season
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USB -C charging
Because of the symmetry that comes with the small USB Type C connectors, the convenience they bring is welcome. You will not have to worry about which side is “up” since it can be inserted either way. This eliminates the frustrations of earlier USB types that plug only in one way (anyone ever got that correct the first time anyway?).
Additionally, both ends of a type C USB have a reversible connector and therefore any side can do while charging. USB-C cables support new standards that enable them to carry significantly more power and at fast data transfer speeds of up to 10GBps.
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Therefore, USB C is the expected bare minimum this year while we wait for everyone to enable wireless charging.
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Battery Capacity
Most phones can now last a day or more on a single charge even with heavy use. This is largely due to the improvement in battery capacity to match up with the powerful processors and huge screens modern smartphones have.
Ensure that any phone you buy this year has a battery capacity of at least 4000mAH, for it to last with longer use. There are phones currently bearing 6000mAH or 7000mAh batteries. That’s very good, but remember the battery becomes bigger with more capacity, and consequently the phone heavier. But if you are okay with the weight, why not?
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Software Updates
Regular software updates are perhaps the most important thing for me in a smartphone today. If you are intending to use your device in the long term, it’s wise you check whether it will receive updates in the future and for how long.
Updates offer numerous effortless benefits to your smartphone. The top of these is security patches that protect your device from vulnerabilities that your current system might not handle. They discover and fix bugs to maintain the functionality of the phone.
Software updates also add new features to your phone that match up to current tech, while removing outdated ones. The phone you buy this year should guarantee to support updates at least once a year for a minimum three-year period. Otherwise, you will wake up to a useless device in your hands a few months after purchase.
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Performance
Why have a sleek device if it cannot do the primary reason you bought it for? Today, you do not need to spend a lot of money to get a flagship device for its smooth performance. Most budget phones have been fitted with great processors and memory enough to support the elementary tasks the smartphones need to undertake. Sometimes even more than that.
RAM being a finite resource, it is best to aim for at least 6GB in a 2022 smartphone. That size should be a sweet spot for launching and using most of your active apps which are demanding on memory, especially games. More RAM is good, as can be proven by the performance in phones (mostly flagship devices) bearing 8-12GB RAM.
For Storage, 64GB should be good enough to rest the possibility of running out of space. This is also because cloud storage options are becoming more commonplace. Consider using cloud storage instead of spending a fortune just for the 256GB of internal storage in an expensive smartphone
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Technical Support
A warranty comes with every phone, but very few of us ever use those after purchase. To be honest, however, most of the terms are vague in regards to what exactly they cover and what they don’t. If that is not the case, a few of your personal customizations will render it invalid.
Can you get your screen easily fixed if it breaks? Is there a trusted dealer locally for your accessory if you need them replaced? Make sure that you have legitimate and convenient access to technical support especially for repairs. Check to see if your phone brand has that in your locale or it will be another long period of waiting for shipping to happen for your accessories.
With the above features ticked, you should have a head-start in making a wise decision. What are some of the extra ones that are crucial to you?
If you want value for money go for the lesser popular brands over the market leaders. I mean a Realme valued at say 25k will pack a great deal of features compared to a Samsung of the same price range.