Best mobile phone? Unless you got religion it ain't easy.

Best mobile phone? Unless you got religion it ain’t easy.

I’ve been thinking about getting a new phone. My Oneplus One is not really that old, maybe a yearish and it is still in good nick. Problem is that it keeps freezing when I try answering inbound calls. I end up having to call people back, once they’ve finished leaving a voicemail.

I’ve had a few problems during my time with the OnePlus One. For a while over the summer the phone occasionally became completely unresponsive, constantly appearing to enter digits in the phone unlock screen. This went away, presumably during a firmware upgrade. I’m sure there will be a fix for my current problem. Problem is I don’t want the hassle of researching the solution and then implementing any available patch.

This has made me start thinking of maybe getting a different phone. I’ve even been thinking the unthinkable and considering an iPhone. For those of you who know me you will know that would be a serious change in policy. A step over to the dark side. Funnily enough a number of engineering types I know who have iPhones have always considered themselves to be in the light and that it was who was groping around in the murky underworld.

Yesterday I popped out to our local corner shop (Tesco) where they have a large toy (electrical gadgets) department.I had a go at holding a number of different models – Apple, Samsung and others. Disappointingly the iPhone was by far the most comfortable in my hand. The Galaxy S6 felt it had a strange metal edge to it and the curved job seemed to be a non-starter.

On the basis of that cursory test the iPhone had it. It was interesting to see that you can actually buy a Nokia phone now that costs £15 including £10 worth of PAYG credit on the sim. That’s a fiver for a phone! Fine if you just want a spare to make calls and send texts.

Anyway getting back to my desk I did a search for “best mobile phone 2015”. Techradar came up near the top and their fairly recent review compounded my difficulty. The iPhone 6S, the highest ranking Apple device, only ranked 4th according to Techradar. Now one might consider the Techradar reviewers might be Android biassed but an at a glance look at the specs (courtesy Techradar) shows that the Samsung comes out ahead in a number of the parameters:

1. Samsung Galaxy S6

4. iPhone 6S

The different in battery capability is fairly marked as is the RAM and camera spec. Apple fanbois may counter by claiming better functioning and integration of software. They may be right but this doesn’t help me in my buying decision.

In the meantime I’m going to stick with my Oneplus One and see what comes along. The one lesson here is that (brand zombies/the religious apart) this type of purchasing decision needs to be taken at leisure.

Ciao amigos.

2 replies on “How do I decide which is the best mobile phone?”

btw the continuing growth in camera pixel count is interesting innit – driving storage usage. I’ve just started paying for 1TB of Google drive to complement my 2TB NAS storage.

Just had a firmware update – am wondering if that will fix the phone freezing when being called bug