The Smartphone - choosing the modern Man's best friend

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Ever since I started working on changing my habits from bad to good I have been doing a bit of thinking and writing too. That's because my day now seems to be a little longer than 24 hours. No more time wasting watching TV or going on unnecessary learning escapades on the Internet. Now I get things done.

Anyway, asPhone booth - Choosing a smart phone I was saying I started thinking about how special my phone has become to me over the past few years. It suddenly occurred to me that it's no longer the dog that is Man's best friend. It's the smartphone!

I don't know about you, but to me my smartphone phone is one of the most important devices that I have ever owned. To a certain extend, I think I could go as far as saying that it is like a part of my brain that I keep in my pocket. I use my mobile phone for almost everything. 

To me a phone is no longer simply a phone. It's a device that can be used for endless purposes. You can use your phone for taking pictures, recording your baby doing funny stuff, to send to grandma, using both audio and video, making a shopping list, purchasing goods online, editing documents, as a watch (remember those things called watches?), for sending text messages, etc. You can even use a phone as a means of tracking your child's (or wife's) movements without even leaving your house. The possibilities are endless. Hell, you can even make your phone bark if you want to.

Remember the days when we all used to look at network coverage when deciding which network to buy our phones from? Those days even the weight of the phone being offered was a big issue. People would pick up the cellphone and bounce it up once or twice and try to check whether the weight was alright. Those where the days when owning a cellphone was a symbol of success.
 
Those days are gone. We are living in a time where each and everyone can have a mobile phone. Even preschool children have phones these day. Believe me. I am a teacher and I am talking from experience here.
Dog - mobile phone
These days there are so many different types of phones to choose from. And then there are applications to worry about. Since the smartphone is now Man's best friend, we need to take good care of it by installing the best possible software. With the right set of applications installed, your phone can help you improve productivity. 
 
Now the question is what should we take into consideration when purchasing a mobile phone since weight is no longer an issue. Neither is network coverage.
 
I believe choosing a phone is just as important as choosing a dog that you are going let your kids play with and be sure they will be safe. May be I exaggerated a little bit. But the point I am trying to make here is that selecting a smartphone and the combination of applications that you choose to install can make a big difference to your productivity. 
 
I am quite happy with my current phone, a Sony Ericsson WT19i, but there have been quite a few cases where I was not satisfied with phones that i purchased. So I have decided to put down a list of things to take into consideration next time I decide to purchase my next best friend. With your help I am sure I won't go wrong. Please add your ideas and what you think is important to remember when buying a good phone.
 
I believe that Man's best friend should include the following:
  1. A good Internet package - if you want to use your phone as a true mobile device I guess the most important thing is to get a good deal for the Internet access from your service provider.
  2. Operating system - there are quite a few to choose, i.e. android, iOS, windows phone, etc. I probably will go with an Android since Linux is my daily bread.
  3. The number of available applications has a huge influence on my choice for the operating system. Even though a lot of applications work across all platforms, there are still situations where my choice of smartphone will depend on the applications I intend to use. This means I should plan ahead. There is need to research applications before buying a phone.
  4. RAM and CPU - I am a fan of productivity enhancing applications and I have a lot of them running at any given time. That means the maximum possible RAM and a fast CPU. 
  5. Installing a lot of applications means on-phone storage will be very important. This is especially true if the applications I will be installing will not have the option to install them on the SD  card. 
  6. They say size does not matter. In the case of SD cards that is a lie. Most applications will be installed on this card. This is the same place where my documents, photos, videos, music and other things will be stored. So the bigger the better.
  7. Screen size is also very important, but not as important as the quality of the graphics card.
  8. I am not really a fan of taking photos but a good quality camera comes in handy when showing grandma photos of her grandchildren since she lives thousands of miles away
  9. Audio quality will be important when listening to those productivity podcasts
  10. The last point is to go online and read reviews and opinions written by people who have already purchased a similar phone. They usually have a lot of good information about the kind of problems to expect if you buy one. I would trust other users' judgement more than the information on the manufacturer's website. 

That's all from me. Now it's your turn to add what you consider to be important when buying a phone. I hope this list will help each and everyone of us to purchase our next best friend armed with the all the necessary requirements.

 
 

 

Sun, 23 Sep 2012