Mobile phone manufacturers regularly release new devices with unique functions and shortcomings. It is therefore a rather frustrating task for individuals seeking to buy new devices to decide whether to buy the latest Samsung Galaxy or stick to the Lumia series. When cost is an issue, the individual may consider Tecno or Infinix products. While this is a challenge that every gadget user and lover contend with, our expectations for a device that would satisfy our yearnings are quite different. In this special opinion piece, Innovation Village’s contributor and highly revered gadget reviewer Jesse Oguntimehin shares his idea of an ideal smartphone.
Choosing what phone to buy is a task. It is one of the reasons people read mobile phone reviews and one of the reasons I write them as well. People do not only rely on online reviews, but they also rely on their friends to determine what phones to buy. Even when they do, they still get to the phone store and still get inundated with different choices.
Picking what phone to use can be a hard task, especially as right now, there’s no one single phone that is perfect, a phone that fills an individual’s need at say 98%. This post is my attempt to describe a phone that will be 98% perfect for me. I’d like to know about yours too in the comment section.
Design and Size
My perfect phone will be exactly 5.0” and the phone that come pretty close to it is the Samsung GALAXY S5. It is large enough to read and view documents on it; it is also not so large that I can type on it while standing in a bus and using one of my hands for support. This size is also very ideal when going for one of my runs. I use running apps on my phones and carry the phone with me on my runs. Imagine me carrying a Samsung GALAXY Note 3 or 4. Awkward, I know. I once ran a 5 km race carrying a 6” Nokia Lumia 1520. Weird and a burden.
However, the Samsung GALAXY S5 is not my ideal design. My ideal design will be the One Plus One. I’m so much in love with the metal finishing at the back, the ‘unibody’ nature of the phone, the metal taping and the ability to switch from physical option buttons to on screen buttons.
The One Plus One is however too large for me.
Camera and Photography
A 41 MP back camera and a 5 MP front facing camera will be enough. With the ability to determine at what megapixel I want to take pictures. The Nokia Lumia 1020 comes to mind.
I once went on a photowalk with professional photographers. They all shot with pro camera, while I shot with the Lumia 1020. It is a beast of a camera on a smartphone. I can’t wait for the Lumia 1020 successor. Hopefully, Microsoft that took over from Nokia would launch a Microsoft Lumia 1030 running Windows 10 before the end of the year.
Operating System (OS)
The ideal operating system on a smartphone will be a fusion of BlackBerry 10, iOS 8, Android Lollipop and Windows 10 (Phone).
On the BlackBerry 10, they get email and messaging better than any other mobile devices. Apple knows how to build a very efficient operating system without necessarily using too much phone resources.
Apple has long created awesome devices on 512 MB RAM devices. The only company that is close to Apple in building very resource efficient operating system is Microsoft with Windows. Many 512 MB Windows Phone devices run the latest Windows Phone 8.1 OS and they’ll be getting the Windows 10 Universal OS that will be released soon.
Multitasking on the Android, the way apps can interact with each other and openness are the reasons why the Android OS is very ideal. On Windows Phone, this OS is clean, simple and like.
So, the ideal OS will fuse all these OS features together in one. But I am more likely to go with Apple’s iOS the way it is now and wish they are more open and get how to deliver email more efficiently.
Battery
The ideal smartphone should have battery that will last a whole day without being too large. The phone that comes very close to delivering this is the Motorola Moto G. It is easy to know how this was possible. The screen resolution of the Moto G is not as high as that of the Samsung GALAXY S5 and other high end spec phones.
Even at that, the ideal smartphone should be of moderate 5-inch size and still have a battery that can last a whole day under intense use.
A battery technology should be invented to take care of this, as the BlackBerry Passport and the Lumia 1520 that can last a day on a single charge a humongous in size. Aha!
Earphones and Sound Quality
I will go with Sony phones. They understand how to make sound on their devices and their earphones. I currently use the Sony earphone. I have two–I drop one in my desk in the office and carry the other one around. When you buy other phones today, it appears as if they do not care much about the kind of earphones they are shipping with their phones. This is not the same with Sony phones and their earphones.
The ideal smartphone should have a Sony kind of earphones and sound quality.
The Closest Phone to the Ideal
Which phone out there today comes close to ticking more boxes that I am going to pick as my ideal phone to use today? It is a very tough one. But after thinking through it for long, I have come to the conclusion that the phone that ticked most of the boxes for me will be the Samsung GALAXY S5.
Why is that so? There are a few things I will compromise on, but there are those I won’t compromise on. Samsung GALAXY S5 will give me:
- Superb photographs at 16 MP;
- The size is 5.1” and I can take it on my runs and type on one hand;
- Playing music or watching movies on the phone has a decent audio quality and the earphones that comes with the phone isn’t as good as Sony earphones, but it comes a little close and is manageable;
- The Operating System is a modified version of Android. I can stick with that since the resources that it will consume has been catered for by the chip and enormous (2 GB) RAM size.
- Battery is 2800 mAh which is not bad either. The battery can last a day on a single charge, but only if the usage is moderate.
While this is the phone I see an the closest to my definition of ideal, you might have a different view. Let me hear it in the comments. Let me know what phone is closest to being the ideal smartphone for you.
