6 Pillars of a Good Smartphone - MKBHD inspired.

Knowing the smartphone that suits you with all its features can be a hectic job. We are here to help

Photo Credit : Cnet

The 6 Pillars of a good smartphone are :

Design

Display

Battery

Performance

Build quality

Camera

Design

The design of a smartphone is undoubtedly an important factor in choosing a phone for yourself. The smartphone you would buy would be appealing before you would go in for it. Aesthetics pull the customers to buy a phone. In recent times, the design of a phone matters to the people, and the phone that appeals, most is what they go in for.

Yes, a cool phone design does not make it necessarily a good phone, but it definitely counts since the phone is going to be people oriented.

Display

Since the dawn of smartphones, the sizes have only gotten bigger and bigger. The phone getting bigger affects a lot of areas that also need to get “bigger,” and one such area is the display.

The display of the phone entails a lot; the resolution, the panel used and even the number of nits that the panel can go. The different types of display on smartphones are: OLED, LCD, and LED. In recent years, the most preferred are usually the LED and the OLED however the LCD is also a good alternative.

The main difference between OLED and the Led is, the OLED is made up of organic compounds while the LEDs are artificially made chemical compounds. OLED screens have lot more contrast than that of the LEDs but are more expensive. Blacks on the OLED are really black because the individual pixels are turned off on the display. LED, however, are generally brighter than the OLED, and less expensive than it as well. Both produce great colors and pleasant to the eye. Some phones also allow users to change the resolution settings and that helps in saving battery.

Battery

Battery life in smartphones today seems to be the Achilles heel in the entire industry. The increase in performance of the CPUs demand more power and that is what is making it difficult for smartphone manufacturers to make their batteries last longer. Also, the slim form factor of modern phones makes it difficult for smartphone manufacturers to slot in a bigger battery. Another factor is the displays. People want larger and brighter screens with high resolutions, and all this in the end really drains their batteries. Because of these difficulties, they usually compromise one for another.

Nevertheless, the battery capacities of flagship smartphones are slowly getting bigger by the year, and the CPUs are getting more optimized. In 2018, Huawei surprised the world with their Mate 20 Pro delivering a massive 4200mAH (measure of battery capacity) battery that could last more than a day and sometimes up to 2 days under regular use. That is very impressive and was way out of its league in its competition. Having to charge other phones with its reverse wireless charging technology was the icing of the cake. Nokia and Motorola have also been on top of their game concerning battery performance, and that is partially because they have low-processing capabilities. The future of smartphone battery holds lots in store, so we look forward to them with amazingly fast charging capabilities and longer lasting batteries.

Performance

Performance is one area that seems to be the most developing sector of the industry. Every year the performance of smartphones gets amazingly improved and impressive, and this is due to both the hardware improvement of the CPUs and software optimizations. The Major smartphone CPU manufacturers are Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and MediaTek. They all produce great chips and have their pros and cons. Some major differences need to be noted. Qualcomm produces chipsets for the mid-range/budget level and the flagship level. The flagship chipsets are the most powerful, but they are very expensive. They are used in Samsungs, Googles, OnePlus, LGs, Motorolas, HTCs and almost all the popular Android phones you can think of. They are currently denoted using their values which are mostly in the 8 series mobile platform, meaning their first number notation is an 8. The 2019 chipset is called the Snapdragon 855, 2018 is the Snapdragon 845, and it follows like that. The mid-range phones are also efficient, cheaper and less battery consuming. An example is the Snapdragon 6 mobile platform series. Samsung also produces chipset they call Exynos, and they have some for the mid-range as well as their flagship phones. Huawei has also upped’ their game in the processor industry coming up with Kirin processors which are also one of the most powerful chipsets in phones today. Apple is leading the mobile chipset industry if you look at benchmark scores. (a series of tests created by different companies to find test how powerful a chip is). Their bionic chips together with their software and hardware integration are seamlessly smooth and very fast. However, benchmark scores are not the only factors to consider in performance since the software optimization of the phone also counts. MediaTek also produces great processors, but they are not usually used by the major smartphone manufacturers.

Build Quality

Build quality aspect that is often overlooked when buying a smartphone but is the most painful experience to be compromised. The components of build quality are the screen-crack resistance, flexural strength, glass-back resistance(optional), and material wear. Screen crack can be the most annoying experience of using a modern smartphone if it occurs. It reduces the appeal of the phone and the user experience in general. Screen protectors are usually the saviors, but they aren’t usually 100% efficient. Corning is the major glass screen makers for most of the popular phone brands like Apple, Samsung and many more. Their gorilla series for smartphones have proven to be of the best quality and can stand various levels of strain and stress. Zack Nelson from the famous JerryRigEverything channel does numerous tests on smartphones test their screen-scratch resistance, flexural strength and internal structure. You can check the link to his channel here and the link to his website here. Flexural strength is basically the phone’s resistance to bend. And most current phones pass the test. (though some still don’t). before buying a phone, I recommend researching on it before and get a good and original phone case and screen protector to protect your phone from all sorts of unfortunate events.

Camera

The camera is now the main reason people pick one phone over another, and I can say it is the most improved component of smartphones over the year. In recent years the quality of the smartphone camera is based on its hardware and software. Note***: Megapixels don’t determine camera quality. Now this a misconception that usually misleads people when buying smartphones because of their cameras. Some phones with up to 24mp cameras can have worse cameras than an 8 MP variant. These are the components I think can be used to choose a smartphone camera based on your preference.

1. Dynamic Range – Difference between the highlights(bright) and shadows(dark) of the picture.

2. Color Saturation and Accuracy (preference)

3. Color tone; warm tones or cool tones. (preference)

4. Detail

5. Low Light shot

6. Portrait/Depth of field performance

7. Zoom capability

8. Video quality

ii) Audio Quality

9. Extra features.

These 9 components can be used to decide which phone you will prefer because all phones are stronger in one aspect than another. For the most reason, most current smartphone cameras are good for social media posting because aspects like detail won’t really matter when it comes to viewing the pictures on social media. MKBHD’S blind camera comparison proved this. (link to video). However, the best smartphone cameras as at 2018 (by people’s preference) are the Google Pixel 3 & 3XL, iPhone Xs & Xs Max, Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and the Huawei Mate 20 pro. Note** preference may vary, so be sure to check out camera samples on the net before making a choice.

In video quality, I think the iPhone is ahead. Its video quality and audio quality sum up to be the best among its competitors from tests I conducted. So, if you are into mobile blogging and you take a lot of videos the iPhone will be the best choice.

Conclusion

Buying a smartphone can be a tough decision, but you’ve got to know what you demand from your phone and what you use your phone mostly for before you decide. Deciding based on information from the masses is not advisable. Do some research yourself and see which phone is best for you. You can ask for clarifications in the comment section below and I would be glad to help out.