In the age of modern information technology, smartphones have become a necessity when interacting with data and information from the Internet. Its pocket size allows anyone to bring a smartphone almost anytime, anywhere.

Consequentially, competition in the smartphone industry, especially in the Philippines, have also become rampant. The majority of smartphones sold in the Philippines are imported from China. Examples include Oppo, which also owns OnePlus and Realme, Xiaomi, Vivo, Infinix, and Huawei. Companies such as Samsung based on South Korea, Apple and Google from the United States of America, and Sony based on Japan, also retain some form of market share in smartphone ownership in the Philippines.

Oftentimes, the specifications for smartphones are sugar-coated with beautified terminologies that makes an unaware consumer fall to the marketing scheme of these companies- whether they be based on China or any other country in the world. Hence, it is essential that one must be familiar and aware of the terminologies involved when purchasing their new smartphone.

This guide provides important details necessary when purchasing a new smartphone. By the end of this guide, you would be able to understand each and every item in a smartphone’s specification sheet and be able to compare smartphones objectively to suit your preferences.

This blogpost serves as a general guide to provide useful information for smartphone buyers based on the author’s experience and understanding of the smartphone industry.

Price

Before buying a smartphone, consider your budget first.

Purchasing a brand new smartphone will help absolve any potential issues that may arise from purchasing a second-hand or refurbished one. For one, its battery health will not be degrated, there would be no scratches on the smartphone’s body and screen, and a guarantee that the phone has not been modified in any way so as to endanger its user from malicious applications, which is more prevalent in Android smartphones than iOS ones.

It can also be a plausible option to purchase a refurbrished, old, or second-hand smartphone given how fast the monetary value of smartphones degrade nowadays. However, caution and due diligence must be exercised when doing so, especially when transacting over the Internet.

Generally, the price range for smartphones may be classified as follow:

  • Budget: PHP 10,000 or less;
  • Mid-range: PHP 40,000 or less;
  • High-end: PHP 40,000 or more;

Note that the price range provided above are mere estimates based on existing smartphones for sale in the retail market. Also note that the price mentioned refer to the smartphone’s suggested retail price at launch price.

This is why I have mentioned earlier that buying old, refurbrished, or second-hand smartphones may also be a plausible option. The monetary value of smartphones, especially Android ones, quickly deteriorate as time passes by. If on a tight budget, an old high-end/flagship smartphone will be always better than a budget or midrange smartphone at launch price. But then again, exercise due diligence and caution when purchasing from these markets.

Knowing the price range for smartphones allows you to compare devices within similar prices. As an example, say we are working on a tight budget of PHP 15,000. From this price point, we are able to purchase a mid-range smartphone at best. If your priority for a smartphone is good price-to-performance ratio for its SoC, then you would purchase a smartphone from Xiaomi or Realme. Likewise, if what you’re after is the brand of the smartphone, then you may consider Samsung as an option at this price point.

Knowing the price of smartphones for sale within your vicinity will help you compare smartphones against similarly-priced ones. And once you fully understand how to read smartphone spec sheets, you will also be able to compare smartphones not just based on the reputation of the company but also on the actual specifications of the phone itself, ensuring that your chosen smartphone suits your needs.

Operating System (OS)

There are only two dominant operating systems in the smartphone industry: Android and iOS. iOS smartphones are generally priced at the high-end range (with the exception of the iPhone SE series), while Android smartphones are priced anywhere in the spectrum.

If you are just planning to use a smartphone for daily internet browsing, like watching YouTube videos, browsing through social media, playing games and the like, this section won’t matter to you that much. You may skip to the next section

And now, if you are still reading this, allow me to present my excerpt of a more detailed discussion of a smartphone’s OS:

I have used Android devices since Android Jellybean (4.1.2). However, I recently switched to an iOS device for a breath of fresh air. If any, I am somewhat well-versed on the pros and cons of each operating system. I think that I would also be able to provide an objective assessment between these two OS.

Let us first start with iOS devices. Generally, iOS devices are great especially if you own other Apple devices as well. The consistency on design as well as the intricate details that enhances user experience are all well laid-out by Apple. Combined with the fact that Apple generally supports its devices for at least five years of major OS upgrades and the consistent smooth experience between major OS upgrades on different devices is one of the factors to consider iOS devices.

However, one disadvantage of iOS smartphones is the lack for degree of customization for your device. Apple provides theming support for its home screen starting iOS 18, but compares pale when compared against Android’s launchers and themes. Further, the process of sideloading applications on iOS smartphones are restricted- oftentimes being allowed for development purposes only.

In contrast, Android smartphones allow for more customization for its home and lock screens. Owners can download launchers to change their home screen entirely, and if allowed by the OS, their lock screen as well. Another is the ability to sidelode applications outside of its official appstore- the Google Playstore. Users can download .apk files from the Internet to install any other applications that are not available in the Playstore. My favourite ones include WiFi Analyzer and Google Camera ports, which allows me to have HDR processing and algorithms created by Google, which, by the way, is considered by some as the best so far, on my device.

However, again, the strength of Apple is also Android’s biggest weakness. For one, smartphone manufacturers implement their own flavours of Android. They use their own theme and provide features that are used as market points to drive sales for their devices. Hence, OS support by manufacturers also vary. Some smartphones only see one major OS upgrade, while some are lucky to experience two major OS upgrades. The majority of companies also stop providing support for a smartphone model once successors have already been released, or until its end-of-life is reached.

Recently, Samsung and Google- two of the major players in the smartphone industry- have mentioned that they will start to provide better OS support for their devices, promising up to seven major OS upgrades for their lineups. Seeing that these companies are market movers, we may also see other smartphone companies follow suit.

Another disadvantage of Android smartphones are application compatibility. Seeing that there are a lot of smartphone device models in the world, it is impossible for app developers to test their applications for all kinds of devices. Combined with the fact that there are also a lot of SoC providers especially in the budget and midrange lineup of Android smartphones, there will always be a possibility that a certain niche application or feature will not work on your device.

Another point of concern for Android smartphones is system stability. Most smartphone manufacturers design their OS based on their current and latest smartphone lineups only. If an older generation of smartphone receives a major OS upgrade, there is a possibility that bugs will be present in that release because it was not tested on that device.

But then again, an outdated OS does not mean that you will no longer be able to use your smartphone once its end-of-life is reached. If any, your device will be prone to more security vulnerabilities and attack vectors since security updates will no longer be issued, which is most especially useful if you think you may be a prime target for these kinds of attacks. But if you don’t care for this aspect of the Android OS, then go for an Android smartphone.

While the abovementioned information only covers general users, there is also a small percentage of Android users who care about customizing their smartphones to the fullest extent. I used to unlock my bootloader and install custom firmwares for my old devices. I also always considered Android devices over iOS ones for this sole reason. However, more and more smartphone manufacturers are locking the option to unlock the system’s bootloader as of late. My previous Nokia 6, Nokia 7 Plus, and Oppo Reno 4Z 5G have their bootloaders locked by the manufacturer, thus limiting me to things that I can do on the device. If you are planning to buy a smartphone and with the intention of unlocking its bootloader in the near future to extend its lifespan, you may want to consider Xiaomi or Pocophone. So far, they are the only smartphone company that still officers official bootloader unlock methods.

Storage (ROM) and Memory (RAM)

Up next is the smartphone’s storage and memory. However, we first distinguish these two concepts to have a clear understanding of how ROM and RAM works on your smartphone.

Storage, or read-only memory, is a permanent memory that is primarily used to keep your files, documents, pictures, videos, and applications saved on your device. Meanwhile, memory is a volatile memory that is used by an application to process its logic. Being volatile, it is temporary and constantly needs power to retain the contents of its memory, lest it be removed or flushed. RAM is also way faster than ROM, making it the ideal scratchpad for applications to process its logic.

Actually, and strictly speaking, ROM is not supposed to be written by the user. However, this is the term used because we grew accustomed to it. Plus, many smartphone manufacturers also use the term ROM and Internal Storage interchangeably nowadays. So there’s that..

Now that we have distinguished storage from memory, we now explore two common marketing gimicks by smartphone manufacturers on RAM that they use to confuse their customers. First is the size of the RAM itself. Nowadays, it has become more prevalent for smartphone manufacturers to also include the swap file as part of RAM. A swap file is a portion in storage (or ROM) allocated as a memory (or RAM) for use by the smartphone OS.

Smartphone manufacturers often mislead customers by stating that their devices contain a lot of memory, when in reality, it is compensated by storage.

I have mentioned earlier that RAM is the ideal scratchpad for applications to process its logic. This is true because the speed of RAM when compared to internal storage is miles ahead. RAM is just significantly faster in all aspects compared to internal storage.

Now, what happens if an application uses ROM for its memory?

The user will experience sluggish performance and lags while using the application. If any, the only benefit of using a swap file is for applications that are suspended or in the background. Using swap file as memory, which, by the way, occurs more often is a smartphone does not have sufficient RAM, results to degraded performance.

How do we spot for this marketing gimick?

Look at the smartphone’s spec sheet. If its spec sheet for memory displays two separate numbers, it means that the larger number is a swap file. A smartphone offering 4GB + 8GB of RAM is actually a 4GB RAM and an 8GB swap file on internal storage. Generally, 4GB of RAM (or more) is acceptable by today’s standards.

However, this is not the only factor when considering a smartphone.

Another marketing gimick to look at is the type of storage used by the manufacturer. While this is often more prevalent in budget and low mid-range smartphones, sometimes manufacturers insert slow storage as a cost-cutting feature for their devices.

The type of storage also plays a factor in the smoothness of user experience. Before an application is loaded to RAM, it is first retrieved from storage by the SoC before being launched. If the storage is slow, then launching and navigating through the application would also be slow. Likewise, this would also result to sluggish performance and lag on the end of the user.

If you have a 256GB of internal storage available for your smartphone, but only utilizes eMMC, then your user experience will still be sluggish!

There are generally three types of storage in the market, and are as follow:

  • eMMC (SLOW)
  • UFS (FAST)
  • NVMe (VERY FAST)

UFS is the standard nowadays, while eMMC is still sometimes being used by some manufacturers. If any, UFS is faster and has a longer lifespan when compared to eMMC. NVMe storage, meanwhile, is being used by some high-end flagship smartphones. Its performance shines when attempting to record a high bit-rate video format, or if an application is heavily dependent on the smartphone’s storage speed.

However, sometimes, manufacturers do not list this information on their website. Always do your own research before buying a smartphone!

System on a Chip (SoC)

Used interchangeably with the term CPU.

This is a tricky one.

Generally, iPhone smartphones come equipped with Apple’s own proprietary SoCs, Google with their own SoC design, and other high-end Android smartphones with Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs. However, when it comes to midrange and budget smartphones, it becomes more complicated. For one, we have Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung Exynos, UNISOC (formerly Spreadtrum), and other SOC manufacturers all competing in this price segment.

Each SoC has their own advantages and disadvantages over the others. Further, your SoC may also come with features that enables support and compatibility over an application, which is most especially useful when trying to emulate games, capture photos, or play videos with certain codecs.

Some SoC also come equipped with a Neureal Processing Unit, or NPU, which enables better performance especially when running Artificial Intelligence-powered applications and tasks.

However, if all of this is none of your concern, just look up the benchmark results of the SoC to obtain a glimpse of its performance. Benchmarks are synthetic workloads designed to measure the performance of a SoC. Higher scores generally mean better performance, but may not necessarily reflect your real-world usage. Benchmarks also enable you to compare smartphones in similar price points, which is important especially when your primary motivation for buying a smartphone is its performance.

Note that if you are also planning to root your Android smartphone, you may also want to consider the brand of your SoC. So far, Qualcomm SoCs have better community support for third party operating systems because of how easy it is to develop third party OS. If you are, you may also want to research if your preferred smartphone’s manufacturer allows bootloader to be unlocked, which is an essential part of the rooting process.

ENDPOINT

Camera

Nowadays, smartphones come equipped with multiple camera modules. You will generally find at least two back camera modules and one front-facing camera module when you purchase a recent smartphone. Features and specifications for cameras is also complex at first glance, requiring you to know what each features mean before purchasing a smartphone.

There is also a hardware and software component when it comes to camera modules.

We first begin with the hardware component.

Camera: Hardware component

  • Sensor and pixel size
  • Focal length
  • mm
  • OIS
  • Lens

Camera: Software component

  • Image size (MP)
  • HDR Processing and gimicks
  • Camera2API
  • Other features – ISO, Shutter Speed, WB control, Manual Focus, RAW support

Display

…

Other features to consider

  • Battery life
  • Support for WLAN and Bluetooth
  • Fingerprint/optical scanners
  • Network support
  • Build