Buying a Mobile Phone: Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

You've likely owned and used several generations of mobile phones, so why should you read this Buying Guide? This guide aims to help you understand why a phone with a five megapixel camera might be worse than a four megapixel camera; why WiFi, 3G and GSM is the preferential order for browsing the web; what having QWERTY means; and how many songs and pictures will fit on 1GB memory?

The Phone For Me: An iPhone for Work and BlackBerry for Pleasure?

Considering what features you really want from your phone can be a great way to save some cash: ask yourself what you really want from your phone? If you're not interested in texting or emailing, then a QWERTY keyboard will just take up too much space uselessly. And if you already have an iPod, paying more for a phone with an MP3 player may just be useless.

BASIC: many of the above phones can have there features and specifications listed endlessly, with only a "Oh, and it makes calls too" tacked on to the end. There is a growing movement towards phones that are phones, though. Don't feel alone in your frustration and confusion against jack-of-all-trades phone-cum-media-hub devices and instead check out this review of the simple and elegant Nokia 6300.

BUSINESS: You should consider what you really want to do with your phone. If you're not interested in texting or emailing, then a QWERTY keyboard will just take up too much space uselessly. But if you are interested in emailing: you'll want to check whether the email client on the phone supports push (appears automatically, like text messaging) or pull (checked at intervals of) and ensure your email server or provider offers remote email access via POP or IMAP -- especially if you're interested in a business phone, such as a a Nokia E- or Communicator-series. As a business user, ignore idle battery life and instead focus on talk time battery life: there's no good in having a phone with low power draw during idle, but draws heavily when it's actually active making a phone call or sending an email. Opposingly, because of the iPhone's lack of physical keyboard, minimal encryption support, relatively poor battery performance and emphasis on consumer-friendly features like music playing, it is considered a relatively poor choice for business use -- though many of those make it a good personal device.

CUTTING EDGE: Palm's Pre and Apple's iPhone 3GS are at the cutting edge of consumer mobile phone software and hardware technology.

LUXURY: if you've got four-figures to splurge, there are some sleek luxury phones that tend to be feature-limited but have innovative designs with high-end materials: Bang & Olufsen's circular-keypadded Serene; Motorola's "Inspired by luxury watches" AURA; or perhaps Nokia's "experience for the senses" 8800 Carbon Arte.

MEDIA: those interested in multimedia phones should enquire whether the screen has a matt or gloss finish: with gloss catching the light and being reflective, it can be annoying to watch videos on, especially in bright, moving conditions, such as on a bus. Also ask about the support for video and media formats: perhaps, most basic of all, MP3 for music? But does it play FLAC or OGG Vorbis -- formats that offer higher quality playback. And for video: will it support Apples' MP4? AVI clips? FLVs from YouTube? Movie trailers in MOV? If the formats supported by the phone are limited, see if the phone comes with software that'll automatically take non-compatiable media files and convert them -- in high-quality -- to compatiable formats. If it doesn't, and you still really like the phone, there are other conversion software packages available: on Windows, for free, VirtualDub (free) for video and Audacity (free) for audio; on OS X, Handbrake (free) for video and Max (free) for audio are good choices. Although restrictive in media format playback and DRM-happy, due to the iPhone's large, almost full-body sized screen, it is held up as being an excellent media device.

A tour by Nokia Conversations on the Nokia E71 being put-together at the factory (in HD):

Who, What, Where: Who's Carl Zeiss, What's Symbian, Where's GSM?

Who's Carl Zeiss? You may have seen lettering on your Sony camera or Nokia phone indicating that the camera lens is made by Carl Zeiss. The Carl Zeiss company make precision optics for various uses, including consumer electronics. A Carl Zeiss lens -- and other other high-quality lenses -- become very important to a photo's image quality very quickly once you break past the hurdle of a few megapixels; to the degree the quality of a photograph will be improved more by putting in a better lens than simply ramping up the megapixels -- that's how it's possible for a four megapixel camera to produce better-looking, higher-quality images than a five megapixel camera. The marketing departments chose a number to push, and they chose megapixels in the same way they chose watts for speakers: but don't get caught up in the hype. Judge other qualities of the camera, including checking out actual photographs taken with it, which leads us to...Another trick; visit photo sharing websites like Flickr, where you can see photographs taken by real world people in real world conditions, not just the professionally tuned, shot and possibly enhanced images found on the manufacturer's websites -- here're links to Nokia and Sony Erricsson devices on Flickr.

What's Symbian? Symbian is the name of the Operating System used on Nokia's mobile phones and is developed in-house. Symbian is broadly criticized for being sub-par, with critics citing its' instability, slowness, complexity, relative insecurity and, in many cases, aesthetically unpleasing themes. That being said, Nokia phones are known and loved throughout the world.

Arguably the best mobile operating system is the iPhone OS: already up to version 3.0, iPhone OS is fast, secure, controlled, simple-to-use, frequently updated and improved operating system with a good looking design. Coming exclusively with iPhone's, the iPhone OS has rocketed in market share, quickly out-stripping the hobbled and increasingly hopeless looking Windows Mobile operating system. With the massive and growing popularity of the iPhone OS one hopes that Nokia and other mobile manufacturer's will feel the heat of competition and quickly and thoroughly improve their operating systems. This is especially true for Windows Mobile, Microsoft's slow and rather lame effort in the software for mobiles market -- many predict the demise of Windows Mobile as Apple continues to sell iPhone's at an almost phenomenal rate.

Where's GSM? GSM is -- usually -- all around us! GSM is the network that most mobile phone communications are carried on. Although 3G was built to succeed GSM, it has enjoyed only a lukewarm reception from the public; so GSM is still going strong, with little chance of being edged out soon.

Acronym Confusion: A Quick Introduction to Mobile Phone Terminology.

QWERTY: on a full, conventional computer keyboard (and typewriter!) the most left, top-aligned alphabetical key is 'Q': with 'W - E - R - T - Y' following it. Saying a mobile phone has a QWERTY keyboard is just a quick way to say it has a computer-like PC keyboard, with every letter of the alphabet having its own key on the board; unlike typical mobile phones, where a single key has multiple letters assigned to it¹ (think 1 being 'a', 'b' and 'c'). QWERTY keypads generally allow for much higher typing speeds and so are normally found on business phones, such as Blackberrys and Nokia E-series, and high-end phones, such as the Nokia N97. With so many people able to expertly type on 'normal' mobile phone keypads, there's little sense in many paying more for a QWERTY keyboard. This writer, however, after many years on typical phone keypads, enjoys the space of the QWERTY keyboard on his Nokia E71.

GSM vs 3G vs WiFi: with millions more customers with millions of more things to do, such as video-calling and browsing the Web and using emails, GSM's bandwith capacity started to seem a little meek to network operators (?). The networks and mobile manufacturers developed a new, "third generation" standard: 3G. 3G is supposed to increase capacity and speed, allowing you to browse the web (even by tethering your phone to your laptop) or make video calls. Few people use these services to their full extent though: when was the last time you received a video call on your phone? And your battery life is significantly reduced by being connected to a 3G network. With the billions spent on setting up what is a patchy network of 3G coverage, and the utility of 3G is debatable. While a 'shiny new feature', you should weigh up the extra cost of having 3G technology in your phone and the affect it has on battery life before jumping on the 3G bandwagon; a good list of 'issues' with 3G is available on Wikipedia. That said, 3G is extremely useful for 'Mobile Broadband'.

WiFi stands for "Wireless Fidelity" and it's the technology that lets you wireless connect to your wireless router at home or at the office. Wherever possible, it's generally recommend you hop on a WiFi network from your phone to surf the web with, as it's likely to be faster -- and not cut into your phone contract's data allowance.