5 Pillars of a Smartphone

Nowadays smartphone has gotten really good lately, they have gotten camera so good with 108 mega pixels sensor, the insane 100x periscope zoom thing, they have gotten screen so good, the ultra-smooth 120 Hz refresh rate, they now eclipsed the resolutions we had on laptops and TVs a couple of years ago, the crazy 65w charging technology which may charge a 4000+ mAh battery within 30 mins, but there is always seems to be a ‘but’ to deter someone from buying a smartphone. There is always this one critical flaw with basically every other smartphone in the market, as they say nothing is ‘perfect’. This is probably something you have experienced while shopping for a smartphone. So then what is a good smartphone or in better words what makes a smartphone good?? To answer this question first we need to understand that there are basically five key features in a smartphone, these features are the five “Pillars of a smartphone". And if a phone does all those five things well, then it is probably worth the money and a good choice to buy. So, what are these ‘five features’ and how they are evolved by the years??

1.The Build Quality

It is all about the size, design and the durability of the smartphone. We are going to be handling, looking at and viewing our smartphone for countless times in a day, so that is why the build quality of a smartphone plays a key role, not only for our comfort but also for the durability of the device. The screen to body ratio, the size of the bezels, the edge to edge designs, the amount of curvature of screens at the side, whether it’s a notched display or one with a punch-hole or with pop-up mechanism, is the back glass, metal or plastic all these criteria comes under build quality. Samsung devices generally comes with a good build, but to be honest, lately flagship devices from all the brands have excellent build quality.

2. The Display

The display of the smartphone entails a lot. At the end of the day it is the part where the maximum interaction occurs. The resolution of the screen, whether it is full HD+ or quad HD+, the refresh rate (the rate at which the screen refreshes per second) 60hz/90hz/120hz, the type of the panel whether it is LCD or OLED, pixel density, viewing angles, the number of nits that the panel can go (nits is basically a measurement for brightness) all these things accounts for the display criterion of the smartphone. When it comes to displays, Samsung sits at the top as they produce some best smartphone displays out there. Fun fact, even Apple gets the display panels for their iPhones and iPads from Samsung. So ironically, apart from being rivals at the market, for every iPhone or iPad sold Samsung slightly gets benefited.

3. The Camera

Nowadays, camera has become a main reason people pick one phone over another, in other words we can say that it is one of the most improved components on a smartphone over the years. The versatility in camera compartment has improved so much that now we have not only triple camera setup but quad camera setup or even smartphones with five or six rear facing cameras. These multiple camera setup accounts for the 120-degree field of view wide angle shots, the crazy 100x periscope zoom, low light performance, the portrait effect, the cool ultra slo-mo shots and many many more. NOTE : the number of camera lenses and the number of mega pixels alone does not determine the performance, for example Google Pixel devices had only one rear camera sensor up until previous year and even the latest Apple’s iPhone 11 has 12 mega pixel sensors, yet these two companies produces the best camera smartphones.

4. The Performance

As said for Camera(s), performance of the smartphones is another criterion which is massively improving year by year. This overwhelming improvement is made possible by great optimization in both hardware side and in software side. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, Apple’s Bionic, Samsung’s Exynos chips, Huawei’s Kirin modules, MediaTek's Helio and Dimensity chipsets are the major smartphone CPUs available. It is rumored that Google has also made significant progress in developing their own chipset code named “Whitechapel” and is to set to power Pixel phones as early as next year. At this moment, Snapdragon 865+ is the best android CPU and Apple’s A12 bionic is their latest SoC (processor).

5. The Battery

The Battery is the final pillar and one of the most important features in a Smartphone. The increasing CPU performance year by year demand more and more power which creates a dilemma for smartphone manufacturers for producing long lasting battery supply. The fancy desire for slim form factor also makes it difficult to slot in a bigger battery. Yet we have nowadays smartphones with huge battery capacity like 5000mAh, and the Asus ROG 3 is rumored to come up with a massive 6000mAh battery which is really ‘whoa!!’. Not only the battery capacity is increasing, the charging speed for these is also increasing simultaneously. With the enormous 50w and 65w chargers we can easily juice up a massive battery in a relatively lesser time. The amount of battery capacity one needs is relative, for example if you are a heavy user and work on apps, play games, stream videos and more then go for a smartphone with higher capacity. If you are an average or light user, a handset with 3000ish mAh battery would be good enough to run for a full day.

These are the major five features or I say ‘Pillars’ of a smartphone that makes a device better. Also, these are the most important criteria to look into while choosing a smartphone and how these features has evolved the years passed by. So, next time while buying a new smartphone keep an eye for all these things.

Thank you for reading! Digitally Yours.