A lot goes into choosing the right smartphone. In fact, a helluvalot goes into it. There are a ton of things to consider. Specs, look and feel, fluidity, operating system all come into play when we set our brains to churning about what phone to buy. But we at Pocketnow wanted to know, what’s the most important aspect of a smartphone. The number one item on your list that makes you say, “I ain’t buying this thing if it doesn’t have X”?
The guts
Cores and GPUs and gigahertzes, and all that jazz. What gets you going is having the best of the best of the best, even if your phone catches fire every time you play Asphalt 8, that’s cool as long as the thing doesn’t lag. You need to have the best processor, the most RAM, expandability, swapability, inside that chassis, which could be made out of formica for all you care, as long as this puppy ~goes~!
The outside
You’re not one to quibble over specifications. You want to be the belle of the ball – the head turner. You want to start and end conversations with the absolute best in look and feel of your phone. You love the sexy and there’s nothing wrong with that. For you the phone has to have just the right weight, balance, and feel in the hand or it just won’t do. Whatever internals you have to fit inside there is fine with you, because…rawr… so fine.
The screen
And speaking of the outside, check out this screen. You want full, colorful, bright, and pixels that are packed in tighter than a Japanese subway. You want to witness the glory of full HD Netflix on a screen no smaller than a tall child and you’re willing to carry around an oven mitt for those post-Orange is the New Black marathons when the back of your phone is cool, but the screen is attracting moths from three blocks away.
The software
You don’t care about look and feel, and you’re ok with a step down in specs as long as the experience behind the screen is butter smooth – no actually, that’s buttah smooth. That’s right, you’re looking for the flow. Hardware has something to do with it, but mostly you want everything to feel right on that screen. You don’t want gimmicks, just a premium experience.
The camera
You haven’t carried a camera with you since Clinton was in office. Why bother? You’ve got a solid shooter in your pocket every day and you can snap ‘em all – low light, bright light, motion or still. Your camera can snap, crop, and upload to all the social media sites, but can also handle printing out some of the more gorgeous shots that flutter from your fingertips. When you sleep, your nightmares all have overexposed noise.
The price
You aren’t looking for the best of everything, unless it comes with a price tag that would make Ebenezer Scrooge blush. You know there will be compromises, and maybe a tradeoff or two. But you haven’t been on a contract since Clinton was in office. So that’s your superpower. The ability to find the best deal on the best specifications/camera/etc. for the money. The ability to find the best compromise.
So which one are you? There are solid arguments for any one of these, even if the hardware category is a bit pretentious. I’m a camera guy. I love to have a great camera experience and great photos. My phone is my camera. In fact, pretty soon, I plan to carry the Galaxy Zoom because, why not? I hate it when I snap a cute photo of the kids and it turns out super dark or blurry. I want optical image stabilization, and even a little zoom if I can manage. I still lust after the Nokia 1020 and I really hope we see a Windows 10 successor to that beast.
So what about you? I get that all of those things might be important, but what is ~the~ most important thing to you? I get the sense a lot of you will be all about those specs, ‘bout those specs, no hardware, but maybe I’m wrong. Go ahead and vote down below and if you want to elaborate, feel free to drop a comment or three and let’s get some discussion going.