The Smartphone - choosing the modern Man's best friend

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.

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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Screen size is also very important, but not as important as the quality of the graphics card.
- 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
- Audio quality will be important when listening to those productivity podcasts
- 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.