BUYING A SMARTPHONE IN 2019

We’ve came a long way since the release of smartphones seeing different kind of innovations, designs, but between all of this which smartphone is the best for you and which is worthy enough to remain in your pocket, So let's find out here. Smartphones have become more interesting since their launch and become more desirable world-wide, whether you want to surf the Internet, play games, take photos, seeing movies etc everything is concentrated on your littles device. We’ve seen great iterations from companies HTC, LG, again great powerful phones from Apple. But depending upon the following factors you will be able to choose your phone.

BUILD QUALITY

First and foremost everything in this world has its outer design and this determines how strong your smartphone will be. If you want the most solid military grade phone then go for a phone with metal build as this are less fragile than glass and will never break. If you want the best stylish phone then you have to go with glass back phones as phones with glass back looks great and companies like Huawei, OPPO, Vivo are giving great colour flow effects in their phones. Glass back also decides whether your phone will have wireless charging. But glass has more negatives than positives, no matter how strong Gorilla glass tries to harden a glass, glass will remain glass as if you drop your phone you might get a scratch, a crack or even you may end up breaking your whole back of the phone. Glass also is very slipper and is the most strongest fingerprint magnet. When you will unbox your phone you might see the phone is very beautiful but after 5 min you will see your back of the phone is fully smudged.

GLASS BACK OF GALAXY NOTE 9

Display

This is the most important thing in a smartphone as everything you will do, it will only be on the display. Display is your only way of interacting with your phone and you have to choose correctly which display to go with. There are many type of display out there in the smartphone industry and there also 3 types of resolution very common these day except 4k. Most of the smartphones comes with 1080p display and it's the most used resolution. But manufactures took it to whole another level by using special display technologies with IPS panel, LCD panel and the biggest and the greatest AMOLED by samsung. Amoled is the best display quality with inky deep blacks great colour reproduction with great outdoor visibility. The galaxy note 9 which is the best phone of 2018 has the best display and you can view screen contents even under direct sunlight. Smartphones priced form mid range to mid higher level all has 1080p display but flagship phone which costs over 700$ has 1440p or quad HD panel. Samsung has a great respect in the display world as it produces smartphones with the best display, but LG has its own share of things with P-Oled display but it has some issues. Smartphones having displays resolution of 720p is vanishing slowly but you might find some at the lowest price tags. If you want the best display in 2019 then go for a Samsung Flagship phones. You can also live your life greatly with an IPS or LCD panel displays as they are also great. If you want to save some cost then go with an IPS panel display and most mid range smartphones has IPS or LCD display, Samsung used to provide Amoled displays at midrange before but its not below 400$ price tag.

Whatever you do but don’t go with TFT and 720p panel in 2019 as this things are getting older.

SUPER AMOLED DISPLAY OF GALAXY NOTE 9

Processors

Every computing device exists in the world has a CPU to give it complex calculating powers and your smartphone is no exception. Smartphones processor power depend on the price of the phone and the company that excels in the android environment is SNAPDRAGON, it has a lot of processors varying from mid-range devices to flagship smartphones, you also have samsung’s EXYNOS processors for samsung smartphones and if you buy apple phones then you will get processor specially made by apple. Though apple processor are more forward than android processor but it has its advantages and we’ll discuss about it on another post. Now choosing processor is the most important thing in your phone. If you have a great phone having a great camera that can record 4K videos, have more storage for storing best games in the world and have great display, but if your processor can’t handle those then you’re in for disappointment as everything in a phone starting from performance to camera depends upon its processor. If you buy flagship smartphones form 2018 or in 2019 then you no need to worry about the processor as you’re going to get the best processors in the market but if you’re a midranger then always go for a phone with snapdragon 600 series of processors. Snapdragon 636 and 660 are all the rage now but you should wait for new processors to arrive on 2019. Some manufacturers also give flagship processors in mid ranger and upper mid range phones like oneplus 6 and 6T last year giving snapdragon 845 on phones priced at 550$ w and also companies like Xiaomi Pocophone F1 giving snapdragon 845 at 300$. Snapdragon’s flagship line of processors is its 800 series. This lineup of smartphone processors is the most powerful and has the best GPU to let you play any game available on playstore.

RAM

Ram is one of the most essential part of any computing device and your smartphone is no exception. The minimum amount of ram you need these days is 4GB ram and if you can up your budget a little bit then always go with 6GB ram as in 2019 it might get a norm. 8GB ram might be a overkill but smartphone manufacturers are pushing the boundaries towards 12GB ram. An optimised software is important for your smartphone’s ram and ram management is essential.

CAMERA

This is the section which 90% android users want to get advised as smartphone camera became our daily life moment capturers and you don’t need to carry those bulky DSLRs though smartphone cameras can’t compete with them. Today the norm is whether you buy a phone in mid-range or in flagship you must buy a smartphone with dual cameras though google nailed everything with a single camera but coming to that topic later. But before everything there are certain things you need to know about a camera. Smartphone cameras with lower aperture is better for low light photography as lower the aperture larger the lens opens and it capture more light, megapixels alway don’t matter as 13mp better lens can take better photos than a 16 mp rubbish lens. So now you know a little bit about camera’s let’s say about how to pick the right smartphone for your photography. The best smartphone for photography right now is HUAWEI MATE 20 PRO with its triple camera setup and camera lenses with high megapixel count even as large as 40mp. HUAWEI also has one strong point unlike other manufacturer is its Machine Learning technique which uses AI to make your photos more immersive and vibrant, say you point your camera at sky, then HUAWEI’s AI will make the blue colors more vibrant in the sky. While HUAWEI doing wonders with more cameras and high megapixels as well as with its AI, SAMSUNG the big dog in the market is no slouch in the camera department. Samsung launched a technique known as variable aperture which changes the aperture of your camera lens within f/1.5 and f/2.4. So to take great low light photography you need to switch the aperture to f/1.5 and in daylight shots you need to switch your aperture to f/2.4. You can see the variable aperture settings in the PRO mode but in AUTO mode your phone decides what aperture to choose. Samsung also introduced AI l=related photography like HUAWEI with its GALAXY NOTE 9(The best smartphone of 2019). But in camera things only apertures and lens doesn’t matter, what matters most in the software that regulating the phone’s camera as software is responsible for processing a photo, whether making the photo more vibrant or whether doing pixel binning(a technique to mere 4 pixels in one to get better low light shots). The manufacturer which nailed smartphone photography only with software is GOOGLE with its GOOGLE PIXEL lineup. Google with only one camera and optimising its software with plethora of AI’s and critical algorithms it nailed smartphone photography. It even managed to take great shots better than dual camera flagships and also on par with triple camera beasts. This year google pixel 3 managed to give great photography on par with note 9 and Huawei P20 pro. The critical algorithms google implemented in its camera helped it to get best portrait mode or bokesh shots better than any dual camera smartphone.

So concluding this section I would like to say that to buy a smartphone for photography just look for megapixels, aperture the camera provides, Camera software and is all meets your needs then you got your phone of dream. For selfies try to find a phone with at least 12 or 13 mp minimum camera as phone manufacturers pushing the boundaries even to 24mp.

TRIPLE CAMERA OF HUAWEI P20 PRO

BATTERY

While you’re mostly obsessed with your smartphone’s camera, display, processor but all this fails if you’re phone has no power and it will become a toy and for this you need to choose your battery carefully. Battery units are generally measured in mAH and higher the mAH, greater your battery life will be. In 2019 you should not consider any phone with battery below 3000mAH, as manufacturers even jumping as high as 5200mAH battery. The minimum battery you need in 2019 should be 3500mAH to 4000mAH. This the most common at the end of 2018 and will remain the whole of 2019. Though battery life also depends upon the software of the smartphone but coming to that topic in the software section in a bit. You can always squeeze some extra battery life out of your smartphone by lowering your brightness and switching your smartphone in power saving mode. What power saving mode does is to lower your cpu and gpu power in your phone and restrict the amount of apps in the background.

SOFTWARE

Everything in your smartphone is controlled by your android software. Android OS is like windows on your computer. Android software might impact your smartphone in many ways. If your android software is very richly optimised then with low power processor also you can get excellent performance, with low battery also you can get excellent battery. You software optimisation also impacts your camera as explained in the camera section. The latest android software or OS now is ANDROID 9.0 PIE. the king of the android OS is google, as every OS is released by it, and if you want the best optimised software out of your phone then go with stock android,as its the software made directly by google and is without any type of tweaks. These days many of the chinese manufacturers have their own skins and these skins used to make essential battery,CPU power, and RAM. this used to slow down your phone a little bit. Also one of the biggest problem with other manufacturers who uses their own skin or customize android is with monthly updates. Google phones every month get security patches and they also get the newly android version first. You need not to have a phone from google to remain updated, you can buy any phone from other manufacturers but look for stock android or android one. Android one is especially a program launched by google to let manufacturers provide android updates faster to their phones. Chinese manufacturers are the slowest to launch android versions as they heavily customize their skins while some manufacturers have nearly close tos tock android like SAMSUNG, ONEPLUS. ONEPLUS is the company whose android software is more joyful than stock android, as its nearly 90% close to stock but with room for little customization

So this are the things you need to watch out before buying a smartphone in 2019.

Always first see what you need.