Cell Phone Buying Guide

So here you are stuck with your old and clunky cell phone, all your friends are walking around with shiny new devices and swiping their fingers across fancy touch-screens.

Maybe it is time to catch up and throw your old cell phone right out the window.

Technology has rapidly advanced in the last few years and cell phones have become more capable than ever, higher screen resolution, more vibrant colors, more features, better voice quality, cameras, new and innovative applications. One is easily lost in the vastness of today’s cell phone market, I’m here to give you some insight and make your decision on which phone to buy a bit easier.

Deciding what is important to you

First of all you have to decide for yourself which features you value the most in a phone, what are you after? Is it style? Is it functionality? A combination of both? This short guide is primarily aimed at people who want to take it a step beyond voice calls and text messaging.

Say you were after a phone with a touch screen display but consider the iPhone to common, you want to have something a bit more special and not have a phone that everyone else owns too.

iPhone comparison

Well there are a few alternatives to apples popular touch screen phone. Meet the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. Nokias very first attempt at making a touch screen device and I must say it has the potential to be a serious competitor of the iPhone. First things first, the price, the 5800 doesn’t even cost half as much as the new iPhone 3GS and offers comparable features. It runs on Nokias very own operating system, symbian 5th edition which has been tweaked to work with the touch screen. Features include: a 3.2 Megapixel camera with LED assist lights, WiFi connectivity, Bluetooth, and a 3,5mm headphone jack for your standard earphones. Nokia lays emphasis on the “XpressMusic” part of the phones name, it uses a special audio chip for music, and it sounds great, even with the included earphones. No need to buy an additional pair.  Navigation through the menus is fast and efficient; the resistive touch screen is very responsive.
The symbian internet browser makes good use of the phones 3G connection, loading times are acceptable, but not quite as fast as on the iPhone.
Some business features like a calendar are also included.

All in all, it’s a well rounded package offering a wide range of features, in direct comparison; it offers most of what the iPhone can do for a smaller price. You could say this phone offers everything a normal consumer would want without ignoring trends.

The iPhone however is faster, and has a capacitative screen which is very sensitive to your fingers. Another advantage of the iPhone is its large community of application developers, as of now you won’t find as many apps for the 5800 as you do for the iPhone.
But this may change in the near future. So if you are into getting a new application to fresh up your experience the iPhone is the better choice for you.

Other alternatives

Samsung has recently released its new touch screen phone called the Omnia i8910 HD, the special thing about this device being that it has an inbuilt HD camera, which records video in high resolution and shoots still photos which look far better than anything you would get out of the iPhone or the 5800. If you are after a phone which shoots high quality photos I would suggest you look into purchasing the Omnia HD.
The Omnia is the largest phone of the three, the 5800 being the smallest in terms of width and display size, but it’s not quite as slim as the iPhone which places itself right in the middle.

The future

There are also some new phones on the horizon which all aim to push the praised iPhone of its throne. But the popular phone won’t go easily, especially because Apple always comes out with updates and new version improvements