The best magazine
So which is the best handset for you? Well of course it depends on who you ask or what newspaper you read.
Opinions vary from the latest smart phone Nokia N96, with its high-tech connectivity and media capabilities to the Sony Ericsson C905 camera-phone and let us not forget the all singing and dancing iPhone.
You may well not be interested in high spec camera phones or the Walkman capabilities of the Sony Ericsson W580i, but just want a cool looking functional device that can take the odd snap, maybe connect to the internet and check your emails, oh and call or text a human being occasionally.
Then there are the hundreds of call plans, free gift and cash-back incentives.
You can get a free laptop or a Sony Play Station and maybe some cash thrown in such is the competition for your monthly direct debit.
Trawling through hundreds of sites looking for the phone that matches your needs and personality can take up weeks of your very short life.
What constitutes the perfect phone for one individual could be a disastrous choice for someone else.
The sheer volume and variety of phones, the numerous deals in the market place can make turgid reading for the most avid of surfers.
So what is the answer I hear you cry? If we take a cross section of the populace and assess his or her likes and dislikes, I'm pretty much certain that there is a mobile phone out there for everyone.
To narrow it down to one solitary handset is a tall order, but if anything I am always up for a challenge.
To begin with, I suggest you open a new document in word or get a pen and paper and write down the 5 most important features that your new phone should have.
Mine for example are: · Camera, (minimum 5 Mega-Pixel) · MP3 · Video · Email · VHF radio The problem I came across was that some sites are more detailed than others; a crucial factor if you need to know download speeds or music track capacity etc.
But the sites were pretty consistent right across the range of phones with their level of information, meaning that for a general overview, a good description, some decent pictures and a list of features would be a reasonable place to start.
First of all you will need to decide if you are happy with your present network.
You may decide to change because of an offer you have seen in the newspaper.
Tip: Call your present supplier and explain you are not happy and thinking of leaving the network.
The operator will check your records and decide if you have enough loyalty credit to offer a deal on a new handset.
- This saved me £20/mth with Orange for a brand new Sony Ericsson C902.
Some sites put camera or smart phones in a separate section or may list the main features as icons or in a table by each phone.
Try to find a site that offers a network option if you want a particular one so that you can filter for all phones offered by 3 for example.
Choose a site with the style that suits you and write down the phones that match your Top 5 features list.
At this point you may want to add another feature to your list, I did; 'Non-slide or clamshell', meaning I was only interested in a candy bar style.
By now you will probably have a hot-list of about ten phones that have caught your eye.
We need now to investigate each phone for the 'bells and whistles' that will make your final selection THE one for you.
Is the camera high resolution, say 5 Mega Pixels or more and does it have anti-camera shake feature? Does it have WiFi and Bluetooth; you may want to swap files? Is the phone WAP enabled, the Internet can be very handy when on the move? What is the music playback quality like? Write a few notes beside your short-list of phones.
If you would like plenty of memory for say media storage, it might be an idea to make sure it has an SD expansion slot.
Okay which ones are standing out from the crowd? Remember every person is different so don't just take a reviewers word on a particular handset.
Their ten out of ten may not even come close to five out of ten in your opinion - and the opinion that really matters is indeed yours.
So mark each phone in the order of preference that your gut feeling is telling you, from 1 to 10 (if you have 10 in your hot-list).
Now write down what features make the top three phones appeal to you.
An interesting exercise is to now compare these features to your original 5-feature wish list.
You will probably know a great deal more about mobile phones now and it would only be reasonable for your original views to have changed quite a bit.
You will have narrowed it down to 1 or 2 phones by now and the rest is purely up to you as aesthetics are obviously a personal choice.
But I would recommend visiting a few more sites for a more in depth review of each of your final 2 or 3 phones on the list.
If you choose a smart phone it may be worth looking to see which operating system it is running and whether there are any free-ware applications available for download.
Some smart phones are particularly prone to locking up.
Be wary of some deals as you browse the various plans and incentives; you may get a free gift or cash-back but you will probably be committed to an 18 month contract and cash is paid back in stages throughout the term of the contract.
Even then some companies insist you ask in writing and provide statement copies.
The choice is yours.
Garry Sherwood © 2009
Source: ...