Buying Tips for Smartphones Across All Price Ranges Confused over which smartphone to by in this festive season? We’re not surprised given the plethora of options that are out there. Here are some buying tips and some smartphone recommendations across all price ranges - Rohit Arora uying a smartphone can be a tough task when smartphones like HTC One series and LG G2, G3 etc. Even you have so many options available in the Apple uses LCD panels by the name Retina display that market. So here we are with some essential has a particular resolution of 640x960 in iPhone 4, 4S and Bbuying tips that can help you make the right 640×1136 in iPhone 5 and 5S. choice this festive season. Display protection methods Displays Smartphone displays have a coating to protect them from The screen is the first thing you notice when you buy a scratches and accidental falls. The two widely used coatings smartphone as this is the gateway to the smartphone are Gorilla Glass and Dragontail. These are actually alkali- experience. You should look for at least an HD screen aluminosilicate glass shields that have damage resistance (1280x720) as text look sharp, crisp and pixels can’t be properties to protect the screens. differentiated on it. At present, the display technologies which are used in smartphones are listed below: Processor and RAM Smartphones usage is all about multitasking, shifting from AMOLED & Super AMOLED application to application with no time-lag. AMOLED stands for Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting A faster processor will reduce the calculation time and Diode and are commonly seen in Samsung phones. AMO- will provide quick shifting or loading of applications. The LED display is actually a type of OLED display and is known important factor is the frequency at which a processor is for its vibrant color reproduction, good color contrasts and clocked and the number of cores it has. A dual-core proces- sharpness. However there is one disadvantage of AMO- sor clocked at 1.2 GHz will lose the game in comparison to LED screens, they offer highly saturated colors that look a quad-core clocked at same frequency. Similarly a smart- extra vibrant and edited. Super AMOLED is the updated phone with quad-core will result in frequent hang-ups if version of AMOLED screens which are thinner, lighter, and compared to one with an octa-core processor. Neverthe- more responsive and offer sharper and vibrant colors than less, the minimum you should go for is a smartphone with AMOLED screens. 1.2 GHz, dual-core processor. And RAM on the other side makes it possible to run LCD several applications at once without slowing down the LCD screens are the most commonly used display technol- phone by simply reducing the resuming time of applica- ogy in smartphones. LCD displays are of two types; TFT LCD tions in background. More the RAM more the number of and IPS LCD. TFT is Thin Film Transistor technology that application’s instruction it can store to give a smooth mul- is widely used in budget mobile phones. Considering the titasking experience. So you can play games, browse web, price, TFT offer good image quality but offers poor visibility click pictures in chorus without any freeze screens. in direct sunlight and have poor viewing angles. Another Now the question to ask yourself before buying a disadvantage is that LCD panels consume more battery. smartphone is, what is the correct combination of a processor and RAM and how is it going to influence your IPS-LCD buying decision? IPS is the next level of TFT LCD displays. It stands for A decent combination of RAM and processor is re- In-Place Switching. IPS have better viewing angles and quired which is ultimately based on your usage pattern. consume less power than TFT panels. But all of this comes Generally a quad-core processor with 1GB RAM can handle at a higher cost that’s why IPS displays are seen in high end multitasking easily and is enough to give you a great smart- pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] OCTOBER 2014 PCQUEST 29 C O V E r S t O r Y phone experience. But if money is no object for you, then most smartphones today require a combination of a power the market is not short of more powerful options. button and screen swipe to switch it off. TIP: We have noticed that Media Tek processors tend to heat up with graphical intense gaming or during video Design playbacks, which doesn’t seem to be an issue with Qual- Design is also an important aspect as phones are also comm’s Snapdragon processors. a style statement nowadays and it should be built ergonomically so that you don’t have to struggle to use it. Camera Check if you can use it comfortably with one hand, and that If you keep photography in your highest regard then all icons on the screen can be accessed with your thumb. go for smartphones with good camera sensors. Good This would obviously not be the case if you’re going for camera hardware does not take time to auto-focus on the large screen smarthpones that fall on the borderline of subject and covers a wide angle. Another aspect is the phablets. performance in low-light conditions, the picture should not have noise and colors should be natural, not saturated or Connectivity Options washed out. We recommend going for a smartphone with 3G, WiFi, and Bluetooth support have become quite LED flash so that you’re not restricted from taking pictures common in most phones, but you should be careful in the evenings or night. nevertheless, particularly in low cost phones. For instance, some of the older models might have dual-SIM card slots, Operating System but with both supporting 2G only. Four operating systems dominate smartphones today, and they’re quite well-known. If you want maximum choice in Other Important Considerations the number and variety of applications, then Android and • Good output speakers: If you’re a music lover, or iOS are your best bet. Here again, since iOS is open source, often feel the need to do a conference call from your it is more vulnerable to security breaches. Plus, many mobile phone, then you need really good and loud companies may not support Android based devices in the speakers. office because of this. Apple’s iOS on the other hand is • After sales support: This is an important consideration usually pretty secure. Blackberry’s BB OS 10 is perhaps the and you must find out the level of support provided most secure of the lot, so go for it if security is your prime by a smartphone vendor in your city. Often, we concern. In fact, you can even download Android apps on find people struggling to find decent support when BB OS10 from third party stores. There are some pretty something goes wrong with their smartphone. good Windows based phones also out there, but they • Data Backup: Please check what sort of data won’t have as many number of applications as Android backup facilities are available with a smartphone. If and iOS. something goes wrong with your smartphone and you end up taking it to the service center, then there’s no Batteries: Backup and Irreplaceability guarantee that all your data will remain intact after There are two important things to consider as far as battery you get it back. At that point, you will wish you had a goes. One is the backup of course. A smartphone is as good way to backup all the data to a safe place. as the time its battery lasts, and if it doesn’t last a day for • Protective Covers: If you use an expensive the phone you buy, then you’ll keep cursing your decision. smartphone, then spending a little extra on a So, it’s better to read smartphone reviews from various protective flap makes a lot of sense and is highly sources to know the battery performance of a phone recommended. We’ve witnessed a lot of horror before buying. stories where people drop their phones accidentally Some smartphones whose battery can last a day with and break the screen. The cost of replacing the screen fair usage that we’ve tested in our lab are the iPhone 5S, is usually so high that you’ll wish you had spent an LG G Pro 2, LG G3, Moto G2, Blackberry Z3, Xiaomi Mi3 that extra few hundred bucks for a flap based cover. can last a day with a fair usage. • MicroSD Card Support: A lot of smartphones don’t The other aspect to consider is whether you can re- provide memory expansion, which can be a negative place the battery or not. Many phones are sealed with no given the amount of multimedia content that people option to replace the battery. One disadvantage to this is tend to use on their smartphones. With HD content that if you drop the phone by accident and say, its screen making its way on smartphones, the need for greater cracks, then it becomes difficult to switch off the phone storage capacity will only increase. So, do look out for because the touch screen just won’t work. This is because memory expansion when choosing a smartphone. 30 PCQUEST OCTOBER 2014 pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] Best Smartphones under `10,000 Xiaomi Redmi 1S Moto E If we talk about specs, Xiaomi Redmi 1S If you are brand beats all others in the race of budget conscious and find it smartphone category.