Smartphone buying guide


Read this if you're considering a smartphone purchase .... as with most things that I end up spending time on, without really intending to, I end up doing a lot of research.

Smart phones can be compared on a cornucopia of parameters. I'm not kidding here... its a ridiculously large set of 50 or more attributes that can make your head spin. It gets worse if your budget really isn't a constraint, although it should always be - if only for the reason that you don't want to be dropping money on gadgets that are going to be outmoded in six months or less.

So here goes


1. Use - ask yourself what you really need it for. If you are buying it to be connected to the internet, then some things become more important. If you really just want a touch interface that must be Android so you don't want to be left behind as the world moves ahead then you'd choose differently. If you want to read, and are a high information consumer (text), then screen size really matters. Choose a screen that's 4 inches or more in such cases.

2. Make - The market for Android devices is quite amazing... While there's a lot of noise, there's also a lot of company strategy at display here. While Sony Ericsson, seems to have decided that people are mostly going to buy them for multimedia and build quality, HTC, Samsung and LG seem to have placed interesting bets on the low and mid range phones suiting a variety of uses, including Internet consumption. If your need is a sensible phone that looks good, look for Samsung of HTC. If you need something thats just functional and you don't really care for brand snobbery, look for the LG Optimus. If you're all about flashing it out the moment someones phone goes off, loosen your wallet and test your need for attention.

3. Camera Vs  Screen size - In the sensible bracket, HTC and Samsung seem to have traded these parameters off against each other. While Samsung will offer you slightly larger screens, HTC will offer you a camera with a flash but with smaller screen displays. For some bizzare reason, Samsung chooses to leave out a flash even in their Galaxy S1.

4. Processor speed - Choose something thats at least 600MHz or more, even if your needs are minimal. You don't want to be smarter than your phone

5. Andriod version - Choose v2.2 (Froyo) at a minimum. You can always upgrade to v2.3 (Gingerbread), but if you're looking at something that is running 2.1 (Eclair), you're probably looking at an internal spec- RAM, ROM, Display drivers that aren't built for 2011.

6. Cost - Finally, the elephant in the room. ... need to rush out for a bit... will finish in due course.
Do leave me a comment if you need an opinion on anything else - like the iPhone, for instance.

Cont'd after a few hours sitting in Vaayu .... I don't think I've gone out and sat in a lounge too many times in my life and while the scenery is still quite good, I do think I'm too much of a 'thayir sadam' guy to make anything of all that.

Anyway, here's the harsh reality on costs.

The model where an open source operating system is married to public hardware which is subject to Moore's Law in a competitive market has simple implications. Hardware becomes the differentiator for the OEM given that the software is common. The implication - in order to skim the market, which is to gather the highest value available, the only option for an OEM is to churn out the latest, greatest handset at the best possible price (with a healthy markup) and hope people in the replacement and greenfield markets simply lap it up. The fallout is simple - even capable hardware which is half an iteration old is now commodity and is competing with the plethora of OEM devices on the market which are now experiencing the same fate. Now given that the distributor/reseller can return unsold handsets in a trice to the OEM, the OEM has no option but to discount as early and as aggressively as possible. Finally the only thing this means to you is the following. If you don't need the most powerful handset... and chances are unless youre a stock market trader on the move (not an investor), you don't, you should simply take advantage of discounting which is almost as high as 30% in 8 months.


Ok and one last thing.

iPhone has the better hardware for now, with their devices being more evolved. However, there's no way a single company should be able to take on the combined focus on the daily bread of a handful of competitive  Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese companies who're literally running like hell to drop prices and provide more hardware per dollar.

In the longer term, Andriod should be the winner, with the iPhone ecosystem, or the lack of it, looking more and more like the world of the iMac. However one can't write off Steve Jobs, but thats precisely the problem now. He's one man, and he's on his way out ... the iPhone shall follow slowly, and it won't be a happy day.