Looking for a new phone?
By Harsh Ashar | 26 Feb 2008
Planning to buy a new mobile phone? Be ready to answer a whole new set of questions.
The latest mobile phones are often a bit more than all you ever thought you needed in a phone.
The features include MP3 players, high resolution cameras, internet compliance, office compliance, lots of storage space … the list goes on. Some phones have more of these features and others have more of other features. And a few have more of everything. You need to figure out what you really need.
Nokia, Motorola, Sony, Samsung, LG, Haier, Sagem, Apple, Blackberry - you name them and they are ever ready to launch a few more features that are missing in the latest phone you bought just yesterday. Of course, you have to be ready to pay that extra amount to get those features.
The phones come in a wide price range. They could cost as little as Rs.500 and, for those for whom money is no problem, there is the lure of the high-end phones that carry a price tag of more than Rs.50,000.
Incidentally, you may have noticed that mobile phones are becoming smaller and slimmer. A Samsung phone claims to be just 6.9 mm thick; and a Panasonic phone is just 77 mm in length and 44 mm in width.
But the size is the least important of your concerns when buying a mobile phone. Your main concerns relate to the stuff that's loaded in the phone: the software and the hardware. If you decide well, you'll be able to meet your needs without paying through your nose.
First things first. Check the battery life of the phone. It would be a pity if you bought a phone with a host of fancy features you can't use because the battery keeps running out on you. A good phone should have a talk-time of between five and seven hours; more importantly, it should have a stand-by time of at least 300 hours.
Let's look at other features. Remember, you should buy a phone not because it has more features than some other phone but because the features are of some use to you. Buy a music phone, for example, only if you are the type who really likes to listen to music - and have the time to do so. Otherwise buying a music phone could just mean that you have compromised on a few other features that might be more useful to you.
Phones like the Blackberry allow you to do a lot of work that would otherwise require a PC or a laptop. The latest phones come with the capability to let you read and edit Word, Excel and PDF documents and to work on PowerPoint presentations.
If you are a professional who needs to check emails at any which time of the day, then a PDA phone is the one for you. Phones today also come with wi-fi ports in them. You can connect them to a wi-fi network at home or in the office and browse the Net or check your emails.
If you are a music lover who wants his iPod to be merged inside a phone, you need a phone with high sound output and a huge storage space. If you are a photography enthusiast, a phone with better camera resolution could well be the most important feature.
Today, most phones come with a colour display. But before you buy a phone, do check the screen resolution. There can be a huge difference in the display quality between two phones belonging to the same family. The quality of on-screen resolution ranges from 4,000 colours to 16 million colours. A phone to be used for photography or videos should have a minimum of 65,000 colours.
As the camera resolution on phones gets better, it is very important that the screen resolution is high enough to complement the camera. A phone with a 'video graphics array' (VGA) camera complements an on-screen resolution of 65,000 colours. Today there are phones with camera resolutions of 5-megapixels; for these, you definitely need an on-screen resolution of 16 million colours.
Moving on to the looks, phones today come in all possible shapes and sizes. You can buy yourself a simple looking phone or a very stylish one that, say, slides or has a flap. But as the saying goes, looks can be deceptive. Phones that slide must be handled very carefully; there are numerous complains of connecting circuits getting damaged because of rough handling. Similarly there are more chances of a total breakage on such phones in case they fall.
Newer models of cell phones are being launched almost daily, both for the 'Global System for Mobile' (GSM) and the 'Code Division Multiple Access' (CDMA).
With the large number of phone models available, it's not that hard to find a phone that meets all your requirements. It may seem highly confusing in the beginning, but if you take a rational view about matching your needs and features to the available phones, you will come to the right decision.
The only constraint is your budget. If your budget does not allow you to buy a phone that meets all your current and future requirements, you must prioritise your needs and make sure your most important requirements are met by the phone you buy.
