EVEN IF YOU’RE not all that interested in technology, you’ve probably heard about
Apple and Samsung’s legal stoushes. You’ve definitely heard of high-end phones
like the iPhone, and probably the competing Galaxy S III. If you are interested
in technology, there’s good
chance you know about a bunch of other high-end phones fighting it out for
market dominance: the Google Nexus 4, the HTC One X, and the Nokia Lumia 920.
Huawei
Ascend G600
All of those phones are great, but the real
fight isn’t in the high-end range at least not anymore. High-end phones are all
relatively similar in terms of specifications, and in the end what you buy
doesn’t really come down to innovation so much as brand and operating system
preference. The smartphone market starts to get really diverse and interesting
when you look instead at the mid-range smartphones that cost between $400-$800.
In the high-end range, smartphone
manufacturers compete in exactly the same way. They make their own versions of
others’ features, increase their screen sizes and resolutions, add quad-core
processors, and improve their cameras. For a phone handset at a mid-range
price, those features are too expensive, so manufacturers have to find other
ways of standing out.
Most often, innovating in the mid-range
means trying to put the highest possible spec into a case while still turning a
substantial profit, that’s why we’ve been seeing phones that are reasonably
high spec, like the Galaxy S II or the Huawei Ascend G600, coming in at around
$400 - $500.
Other times, manufacturers use other
properties the company owns to their advantage Sony, for example, released a
‘Walkman’ phone a few months ago in an attempt to cash in on that 90s
nostalgia. Thankfully, it wasn’t just a name listening to music on the device
was an improved experience compared to other smartphones.
We’ve explored some of the ways in which
the tradeoffs necessitated by price can make affordable phones that are perfect
for a specific type of use in the pages ahead.
Music lover
What to look for:
If you’re into music, then you’re probably
going to use your smartphone to listen to it. But how do you get all your
favorite songs playing and sounding great?
There are two keys to getting a great music
experience out of your smartphone brand and content. Some smartphone
manufacturers, like Sony and HTC, also happen to own various other
entertainment services. Sony produces all manner of audio products, including
the Walkman brand, but it also owns a record label and a streaming music
service called Music Unlimited.
HTC doesn’t own music content, but it does
partially own Beats by Dr. Dre. Now, we don’t think they’re the best headphones
manufacturer on the market for sound quality, but Beats audio technology does
deliver cleaner, deeper sound on smartphones.
There are loads of streaming services
available to choose from the aforementioned Music Unlimited is just one.
Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, Xbox Music and Grooveshark are all available in New
Zealand currently. You can also but music through services like iTunes. Not all
services are available on all operating systems, however. Spotify, for example,
is available on Android and iOS, but not Windows Phone 7 or 8 be sure to check
whether your favorite music service is available before making a purchase.
PC World recommends:
While there are some mid-range phones that
are designed specifically for music, typically they have other flaws that can’t
be looked past. That’s why we recommend the HTC One X. the One X comes with
Beats audio technology, and most of the streaming services you could want are
available on Android devices. It’s also a slick, high-end phone that can do
everything well.
The
HTC One X comes with Beats audio technology, and most of the streaming services
you could want are available on Android devices.
Videophile
What to look for:
If you’re looking for great video quality,
it’s all about the screen. You’ll want it to be big, beautiful, and high resolution.
The iPhone 4S and 5 are the kings of
high-res, but the screens, at 3.5 and 4 inches, respectively, aren’t the
biggest on the market if you’re all about video. The Samsung Galaxy Note and
Note II have the opposite problem massive screens, but at a lower resolution.
Brightness is also a big deal you need a
nice bright screen that will allow you to view video in lots of different
situations. The brighter the screen, the less glare you’ll get. Brighter
screens are also just generally more pleasing to the eye in everyday
situations, so long as it’s not so high that color is washing out.
Speaking of which, color’s also crucial. If
you’re watching a video on your phone, you want the colors to be as accurate as
possible. In particular, smartphone screens tend to wash out the color red.
Whatever you buy, make sure it has a decent
processor at least 1GHz. Video can be taxing.
If your decision hinges on what content is
going to be available on your device, Apple’s iTunes, which is featured on
iPhones, might be the way to go. It has one of the biggest video libraries out
there. On the other hand, if you’ve got a lot of video content on your PC and
you’d like to view it on your phone, an Android device will allow you to
transfer video files of almost any type from one to the other. An iPhone won’t.
Also important to note is that New Zealand
streaming video service Quickflix is only available on iPhone and some of
Samsung’s Android devices. A microSD card can allows easy transfer of files, if
you have a card reader, too.
PC World recommends:
If you’re going to buy the latest movies,
get an iPhone 5. If you’ve already got loads of video files you want to watch on
the go, reach for the Galaxy Note or Galaxy Note II instead. All three of those
phones are powerful, bright and colorful, and they all have a high enough
resolution for you to watch without having the immersion broken by big blocky
pixels so long as the videos’ of high enough quality, of course.
If
you’ve already got loads of video files you want to watch on the go, reach for
the Galaxy Note or Galaxy Note II instead.
Reader
What to look for:
Want to read onscreen? You’re in luck;
smartphone are a very simple (and popular) way to do so. At the time of
writing, the Kindle app was available for every smartphone operating system,
Kobo is available for all except Windows Phone (you can get a Samsung developed
Kobo reader if you have a Samsung Windows Phone handset), and the standard and
open formats, comprising PDF, Mobi and ePub, can be read using apps available
for all smartphones.
That’s the good news. But there’s a little
bit of bad news: you want a decent quality screen to make reading feel like a
comfortable and easy experience. The key specs to look for are the size of the
screen, its pixels per inch, which determine how sharp the text will appear,
and its brightness in daylight and incandescent light. In the dark, all phone
screens are exceedingly bright, often too bright – I recommend using a white
text on black setting to give your poor eyes a little rest before sleep, if you
read in bed. One nice touch, on apps such as Tomes for iOS, is the ability to
set up auto-scroll, so you don’t even have to turn a page. The only other thing
to consider is whether you might want audiobooks, and how much storage space
you’ll require text only books are generally tiny, a few hundred kilobytes
only, though audiobooks and image heavy books consume more of your phone’s SD
card or inbuilt storage.
PC World recommends:
The iPhone is the king of pixels-per-inch
in the smartphone world. That also means that it offers the sharpest display
for eBook reading. If you can’t afford the iPhone 5, the iPhone 4S is still
available and costs $599. It only has 16GB storage, but that’s fine for books.
The
iPhone 4S and 5 are the kings of high-res
