Do you think its worth to invest in a Smartphone?. What is the Point of Buying costly mobile phone when we know that the technology is changing within 6 Months? This is a question that I keep on asking myself. I have done a lot of research for this article and found out some amazing facts that may help you save your hard-earned money.
Hold on for a minute! read this article before you drop RS 50000 or $1000 or more on a Galaxy S9 or Huawei P20 pro or People’s champ iPhone X. Don’t spend a lot of money on a Flagship from Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Google or any other. Do not follow the trend blindly, ask yourself Do you really need that flagship handset?, Do you know the flagship you bought yesterday is not even comparable to Midrange tomorrow.
The premium flagship smartphone costs 2 to 4 time more than a mid-range smartphone. Previously midrange smartphone used to have a buggy software with lots of bloatware but as time passed the budget-friendly smartphones steadily improved over years. And now some of them are great.
These are the list of Midrange smartphone which I think are great
- Redmi Note 5 Pro (2018)
- Honor 7X (2018)
- Moto G5s Plus (2017)
- Asus Zenfone 5 (2018)
- Nokia 7 Plus (2018)
- Moto X4 (2017)
There are more great midrange devices but these are the best of 2017 and 2018. This smartphone has a very much great build quality, great battery life, great camera and even some are water resistant.
Why I think it’s not good to invest a lot of money on a flagship smartphone
Nowadays we know that the technology in smartphones is changing very fast, we are getting better specs with high-end smartphones and the smartphone I did purchase 6 months later might get outdated today due to rapid change in technology.
- Technology is changing rapidly, we don’t know what would come into a trend like we witnessed Dual camera, Fingerprint Scanner, Face Unlock,18:9 and 19:9 FHD these things used to be a flagship spec yesterday but today they are in trend and every midrange device has got these features.
- Smartphone gets scratched and damage on a day to day usage, dents and screen scratches are most common if we don’t use a screen protector or a cover. If your phone is costly, you may feel like stuck with that.
- Phone theft is another common thing nowadays. Smartphone has become a part of life today and we carry it with us everywhere and the chances of it getting lost or stolen are high, just you don’t feel regret of your high-end smartphone being lost or theft, better buy budgeted one, at least if it gets lost you don’t lose lots of money.
- Midrange smartphone is nowadays providing same specs as the last year’s flagship.
- Midrange phones are also having a good camera example Nokia 7 Plus
High-end smartphone features
Yes high-end smartphone did have many advanced features than a midrange smartphones
- Great Benchmarking scores, you can multitask more than 10 apps at once or can play more than 3 high-end games at once due to their high processing power and ram
- High-end camera, Slow motion capability, great stabilization and advance face unlock.
- Advance AI features
- Water Resistant
- Stereo speakers
- 2k to 4k screens
- High DPI screens
- Advance fast charging capability
If these features are most useful for you then you can go for a premium smartphone but remember after 6 months there will be a midrange device which might give around 70% of same performance than the flagship and remember nobody cares about 2K and 4K displays and even Slo motion.
No Innovation
Yes, this is what I think, Pick up the last year Galaxy S8 and this year’s Galaxy S9 there is a slight camera difference you will find but nothing else, last years Galaxy S8 is fine if you get it in a good deal today.
No innovation in battery department ” we still have that old lithium-ion battery“, they are making a phone bigger and bigger but users need a compact phone that can easily be in their hand, no innovation on wireless charging: still slow and unuseful etc.
Face id, Bokey mode these are the two things company are featuring and then selling their flagships.
This is the way the market is now: A little waterproofing here, a little wireless charging there, a bump up in speed.
Price Hikes
This year iPhone X was priced at $1000 or in India around RS 80000, Samsung galaxy s9 at RS 60000, Oneplus smartphones are getting RS 3000 costly year after year and Google Pixel 2 is costing around 60000.
Those are pretty steep prices, and the trend only seems to be going one way. There were the days when we used to have Nexus branded phone “Nexus 5” which had top-notch specs at an affordable price tag.
It’s your money, obviously, but you could opt to keep your current phone and spend that $1,000 on a brand new laptop, or buy a plane ticket to, you know, anywhere in the world. Or maybe you could buy (nearly) three freaking Nokia 7 plus.
For instance, you can pick up the very decent Nokia 7 plus with stock Android for around 26000, Dual sim, Dual Vo-LTE with stock android. With each passing year, the choice of cheaper, better value phones gets wider.
Do you get better apps and updates on a flagship?
The software update is a big problem in Android. but considering that all of Google’s apps update separately from the OS, it’s not as a big a deal as you might imagine.
In case you are an Apple lover, your old phone will also get the same IOS update as the new one have, example iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 don’t have that much of a difference they can both run Temple Run fast and fluid.
A midrange phone will have all those apps that a high-end smartphone could run, they both have app update at the same time too.
Later we used to have high-end phones with latest updates but now midrange smartphone too gets them equally fast “Android one devices”.
So it’s all up to you to decide which smartphone you are willing to buy, there are some extra advantages of a Premium smartphone which I will talk about later. So this is my personal opinion and it may differ from person to person. But my advice is do a research before buying a new smartphone and dont be a fanboy.