Get Smarter than your phone

Buying a phone today means picking from a universe of options. While some advertise their phone's inflated megapixel cameras, others hope providing more RAM for multi-tasking will attract many. As the world's second largest smartphone market, almost every phone maker now has a presence in India and is willing to cater to the demanding Indian consumer. With such fierce competition, the clutter-breaking formula that most adopt is one-upping their competitors in technical specifications. When smartphone shopping, you'll find yourself bombarded with numbers - quad-core processors, 16-megapixel cameras, 3000 mAh batteries, and so on.

It's a tactic that has worked for years, and phone makers are laughing all the way to the bank. It's all relative. Even phones with impressive specs on paper can perform sluggishly if they aren't optimised. A great example is that of the OnePlus 2, which struggled to match the performance of its predecessor, the OnePlus One, due its poor optimisation, which the company eventually fixed through software updates. User behaviour also impacts a phone's performance. A huge 3300 mAh battery won't matter if your 5.5-inch phone's display is always at full brightness. Here are some of the common mistakes smartphone buyers tend to make when picking a new device:

GIVE ME CORE"Octa-core" sounds fancy and you'll find even mid-range smartphones boasting of these powerful-sounding processors, but it could be - and often is - a trap. It's not uncommon to find dual-core processors that out-perform their octa-core counterparts, because what really matters is how these cores are implemented. For example, the iPhone 6S Plus' dual-core chip beats out the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge's octa-core processor, partly because the Samsung doesn't use all eight cores at all times. A better way to gauge performance is to read up on the actual chip/processor and find out how it stacks up in performance benchmarks.

JUICING UP ON RAMMore RAM doesn't equate to a faster phone. It's the processor and the GPU that helps open apps faster and run games smoothly. It's RAM that facilitates better multi-tasking. A phone with more RAM may not necessarily perform better than one with less. Take two of latest Xiaomi phones for example — the Redmi Note 3 (32 GB) and the Mi5 (32 GB), each with 3 GB of RAM. You'd assume they both perform just as well, but the Mi5 uses the latest LPDDR4 standard, which is up to 50 per cent more efficient than the Note 3's LPDDR3 RAM. So the Mi 5's 3 GB of RAM might well outperform phones with an extra GB of RAM.

MERE PAAS MAH HAINThe one area where mobile computing has struggled to evolve is battery technology, and so phone manufacturers love playing on our fears of the dreaded dead battery by packing phones with increasingly higher-capacity batteries. On the face of it, a larger battery does last longer, but there are many other factors at play. The phone's screen is the biggest cause of battery drain, so a phon e with a 5-inch screen could well go longer than a 5.5-inch device even if both pack the same battery. The screen's brightness plays a big role here — the higher the brightness, the faster the battery drains. You may not need a phone with a 3000 mAh battery, so it may be unwise to go with a fixed mindset. Instead, link your battery requirements with your phone's screen size, how willing you are to regulate its brightness, and your media consumption habits. Some new phones include Lithium-Polymer (Li-Po) batteries as opposed to the conventional Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion). Li-Po batteries are slimmer and safer, they charge faster, and they don't lose charging capacity over time, but in terms of energy density (how much juice they store per unit), they lose out to Li-Ion.

ALL ANDROIDS AREN'T EQUALA reason the Google Nexus phones are so popular is that they ship with the stock Android operating system. This is Android as Google intended it to be: without unnecessary apps and resource- hogging visual elements. Not all Android phones carry stock Android; in fact, very few do. Most phone makers will layer their own 'launchers' or modifications, on top of the stock OS, which could alter the appearance or add/remove features, and they almost always come preloaded with the manufacturer's own apps that you may not need. These modifications could render a wellspecced phone sluggish. It's also important to check the manufacturer's history with software updates. Nexus phones are the first to get new versions of Android, but phones that feature modified versions of the OS may take longer.

MEGAPIXELS DON'T MATTERCamera makers did it for years and phone makers are still getting away with it — selling us on big megapixel numbers. The number of megapixels only determines how big in terms of resolution the photo can be. It is no indicator of image quality. The best way to judge the quality of the camera is to check the size of the camera sensor itself, as larger sensors allow more detail to be captured. On the face of it, the iPhone 6S' 12-megapixel camera might seem inferior to the Galaxy S7's 16-megapixel shooter, but Apple uses larger sensors, where each pixel can hold more information.

YOU DON'T NEED A SCREEN GUARDMost smartphones today come with scratchresistant displays, such as Corning Gorilla Glass. Aside from looking unsightly and not lasting very long, screen protection films are unnecessary. Protective back covers and cases are also not a must. Phone makers spend a lot of time and money to ensure that their phones are durable, so unless you tend to drop your phone a lot, you're probably fine without a case that will make your phone thicker and heavier.

Source: Get Smarter than your phone