My colleague lost her phone last month in SM mall. Our conversation goes into what specifications needs to consider when buying a phone, then I ended up talking about Iphone and it’s awesome security hacks. I am not an iphone user but an iphone endorser.

Buying smartphones sometimes is problematic. Our choice of smartphone is affected by our personal preferences such as colors, size, brand, camera pixel etc. Every time I buy my own smartphone, I considered first the specs then the price. Yes, I often chose phone with best specs within my afford value. In this article, I will share to you my insight about smartphone specification you need to consider, before giving your hard earned money to that salesman. Let’s start.

1. Quality is everything.

I learned it the hard way. This is my method when I bought smartphones from the past. Let say, I have a fixed budget amount of P10k. I will check all smartphones within this price, and I will compare their specs such as RAM, ROM and processor. I don’t care about the quality of the phone, whether it will last for years or not. Guess what? Every six months, I need to buy again because either my phone was infected by virus or it’s battery was draining too fast. I learned that trading phone quality to technical specification is not a good idea, better buy a phone in low specs with good quality than high specs with bad one. In the long run, it will save you a lot.

2. Camera pixels for photography.

If you love photography, you might be thinking how much megapixels do you need? If you love posting in Instagram, here’s what you need. Instagram only accept pixels from (320 to 1080) pixels width and (566 to 1350) pixels height. In megapixels (MP), that’s 0.18MP to 1.4MP, if your camera specs is 13MP that’s too much for Instagram. In addition, if your taking picture for Instagram set the aspect ratio of your camera to 1.91:1 and 4:5 because it is the aspect ratio supported by IG. In my opinion, 13MP and above are enough for photography enthusiast, however it varies with the quality of phone, brands and of course your photography skill. In general, the higher the megapixels specs of your camera, the better it’s picture quality.

3. Random Access Memory (RAM) for multi-tasking.

If you love multitasking, you need more RAM. If you are a gamer, you need more too. RAM belongs to volatile memory. Volatile means temporary, when you shutdown and restart your phone, all data in the RAM will disappeared. When your using your messenger, YouTube, Mobile Legends and Instagram simultaneously, the RAM of your phone is too busy processing all your activity too, and if your experiencing lags, it’s because your RAM memory is not enough. But how much RAM do we need? In my opinion, I recommend 8GB RAM, I read before in an article that it is the optimal value of RAM for phone and laptop.

4. Read Only Memory (ROM) for storage.

If you need to install a lot of application, you need more ROM. ROM is a non-volatile memory. Non-volatile means, after you shutdown your phone it’s still there. Your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are all stored in ROM, without ROM, you cannot install an application to your mobile phones. Now, how much ROM do you need? As many as you can, the higher your internal memory, the better. Just remember, the price comes with it, higher ROM means higher price.

5. Brand matters.

Yeah, brand matters. We all have preferences when it comes to brand. Some of the people I know love Apple, others love Samsung. It will depend to your taste of design and user experience. I recommend to buy a phone from established brands because they have a lot of software and hardware support. They have more service centers too. Some established brands are Samsung, Huawei, Vivo, Sony, Motorola, Nokia, Apple, Windows and HTC.

Bringing It All Together

Those specification I mentioned above are quick specs that you need to check every time you consider buying your phone. There are lots of specs other than that, that determines smartphone performance. If you still have questions about specs feel free to message me in my page (https://www.facebook.com/rbparejaTI/) or comment below. Enjoy your new smart phones fella!