Buying a new Smartphone? Here are the Key Specs you should pay attention to.

There are various reasons why you might be in need of a new smartphone, but getting a good one that fits your  taste and at the same time giving  you the best value for money can be a taunting  task.
In fact,  many don't  realize how difficult it is to buy a new phone until they need one. With so many brands and makes to choose from and all promising to be that phone you have been looking for,  it is definitely a challenge to pick the right one.
Since you have to compare various models and make  at the same time ensuring you are within your budget, knowing what to look out for in any smartphone is quite critical and here we are going to give you the key smartphone specs you should look out for when buying a new phone.
Based on my vast  experience with smart phones I have listed the Key smartphone features you should consider when buyin a new smartphone. These are:

1. The Display.
2. Battery size and fast charging Technology.
3. RAM size. 

1.The display.

The Mi 11 Ultra.

All phones have one thing in common; the display which is the basic interaction between the phone and it's user and is common knowledge that we spend a considerable amount of time daily staring at the screen for a number of hours per day.
There are various factors to consider  in a smartphone display, all of which will finally determine the kind of smartphone  experience you will have.
 These are:

• Display type
• Screen size
• Screen resolution
• Screen pixel density. 

Now let''a look at each one at a time. 

Display type. 

There are currently around four screen display types,  LCD, IPS LCD and OLED

LCD-Liquid crystal display was the first display type.  It uses liquid crystals which are illuminated  by a back light, produced by bulbs behind  the screen or at the sides. 

The major disadvantages of LCD is that it consumes alot of power and cannot achieve 'true black' since the bulbs are always on. 

OLED -Organic Light emitting diode is proudly categorised in to two, AMOLED and PMOLED, the most common  one being the AMOLED.

This display type has two major advantages over LCD. It uses less power, has better outdoor  display and can achieve 'perfect  black' resulting to almost close to nature display. It is also much slimmer.

Note: The most  common display in most low end devices is IPS LCD, which is an improved LCD in order to improve it's display and lower power consumption. 

Screen size.

There are various screen sizes to choose from,  and the size nowadays  is a matter of personal preference. 

However  you might be surprised to know that smaller screen sizes tend to be more clear than large ones,  and that is why Samsung has always been careful  with it's screen sizes. 

I will explain how screen size affects a phone's  display quality later,  but now let me mention here that if you go for a phone with a screen size more than 6.5 inches,  make sure it has a pixel density of more than 400 ppi  or at least close to 350.

screen resolution.

A screen resolution is always given in pixels, eg 720 X 1280 pixels.  They are also categorised in to four: HD, Full HD,  Quad HD and Ultra HD. Each of these have specific pixels
Display type.              Resolution in pixels

• HD, or  720p                           1280X720.
• Full HD-1080p.                       1920x1080.
• QHD-1440p.                            2560x1440
• 4K-2160.                                  3840x2160
• 8K-4320.                                  7680x4320

As you go higher, the display quality becomes much better. For example, UHD has four times better display quality than the HD.
Various smartphones have various screen resolutions, with some between the above standard display resolutions.

How does the screen size affect its display quality?

To answer this, we have to bring in something known as pixel density.

Pexel density gives how much pixels are found per square inch, and given as ppi. For instance, a pixel density of 390 ppi  means there are 390 pixels per square inch.

Let's say your phone screen is 6inch and has a screen resolution of 720x1280, then its PPI is given by:

PPI={√ 720×720×1280×1280}/6.

From this equation you can clearly see that if two phones have the same screen resolution e.g 720×1280 each, but one has a smaller screen than the other, then the one with smaller screen will have a better display quality than the larger one, since it will have a higher ppi.

This means that if you want to have a phone with a screen of more than 6.0 inches, then you should make sure to go for the one with a higher screen resolution so as to have a good pixel density.

Usually, a good phone should have a pixel density of more than 400 PPI, especially if it has a screen of more than 6.0 inch.

2.THE BATTERY.

The Galaxy M51.

This is one of the most important spec to consider when buying a phone, be it that you have a stand by power backup or not.

A good phone battery is one that can give you at least one day of use without recharge, although some phones give up to almost two days.

Battery power is measured in mAh, and the higher the value the bigger the battery.

However, there are various factors which determine the duration of any battery power, some of which are:

• The display type. From the discussion we had above, it is now clearly that LCD screens consume much power since it uses bulbs.
• The screen size. Usually the bigger the screen the higher the power consumption.
• Display features like high refresh rate and HDR10 as well as Always-On-Display tend to increase power consumption. High display brightness also strains the battery.
• The chip or processor. Phone chips are of various technology sizes. Whenever you check a phone's processor, there is a small value in brackets, e.g (20nm) or (14nm) or 7nm. Without going into details, let me just tell you that the smaller this value is, the better in terms of performance and power usage.
• The operating system. Usually the latest OS has better power saving capabilities than its predecessors. E.g the android 11 is currently the best android OS in terms of power consumption.

Battery size is among the specs that has seen China based smartphones become more porpular in developing countries, as they usually have bigger battery capacity.
Generally I always recommend a battery size of at least 4000mAh, but bigger won't hurt. Now there are a couple of phones with over 6,000 mAh battery with the Samsung Galaxy M51 having the title of being the first smartphone to have a 7,000 mAh battery.

3.The processor.

Oppo Find X3 Pro.

Many give varied opinions about whether you should pay much attention on the smartphone processor or not, but the truth is; your smartphone experience will be determined by which processor it powers.
The processor, usually known as System On Chip or just the Chipset is the brains of your smartphone and is the one that determines basically any other spec including the Display quality, amount of RAM, cameras, AI and so on. Currently the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5nm chipset is considered the best processor and is already powering a number of flagship phones including the Oppo Find X3 Pro.
This is why a smartphone processor is the Single most important spec and you should be conversant with the type of the processor that is powering your dream phone.
Understandig a phone's processor can be a challenge, and this space might not be enough for us to cover everything you need to know about phone chipset but will give you the key signs to picking the right processor.
There are a number of phone processors in the market, the common ones being:

• Apple Bionic
• Qualcomm snapdragon
• Samsung Exynos
• MediaTek Helio
• Huawei Kirin.

Each of these have a long list of processors ranging from those found on low range phones to high end devices.

The most preferred processors are the Apple Bionic which is exclusive for Apple and the Qualcomm snapdragon which is used by a number of phone manufacturers.

However, you might find that a given Media Tek processor might be more powerful than a Snapdragon that came earlier.

This makes choosing a given processor a challenging task.

In order to know which processor is the best for you, consider the following factors:

• The network technology it supports. Latest phone processors which apparently are the world powerful support 5G, followed by those that support 4G LTE. Buying a 4G phone therefore means it probably has a better processor than a 3G phone.
• The number of cores. Inside a processor are what are known as cores, which carry specific tasks. Early phones had a single core, then came dual core followed by quad core and now octa-core. The more the cores the faster the processor and less heating since the cores multitask.
• The fabrication or chip technology. This is the ultimate check I would recommend you look for in a phone processor when buying a phone. Usually this is found as a number next to the chip name e.g Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 (14nm) and Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 (10nm). The Snapdragon 845 which is 10nm, is therefore more efficient and powerful than the Snapdragon 636.

Usually high end phones have the best processors, but sometimes you might be surprised to find a good processor in a mid or low range smartphone.
4.RAM.

Galaxy S21 Ultra.

Apart from the processor, the Random Access Memory (RAM), is another key spec that affects your phone's speed and performance.
It is therefore one of the key specs to consider when looking for a new phone and it is not just the size you should pay attention to but also it's generation. There are now a number of phones with 8 and 12 GB RAM, with a few like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra having upto 16GB RAM.
Though RAM is not usually a limitation, it's effects will be greatly felt when it gets filled up.
Different apps have varying RAM requirements, with some apps like gaming and social apps known to be RAM hungry.
For daily use, 3GB of RAM is sufficient, but if you are a heavy gamer or do a lot of multi tasking then you should have at least 4 GB.