Smartphone buying advice: How to find the right mobile for you

This article is about what is important in a smartphone and what minimum requirements you should pay attention to in terms of storage space, connections and software. This information can be used to feed our filters, for example, and you can narrow down the selection according to your preferences. You can find detailed tests of smartphones from our editorial team here.

Storage: having is better than needing

Apps, photos or streaming content downloaded for offline use require storage space. But how much memory should a smartphone have as a minimum? My experience: 64 GB is the absolute minimum. 128 gigabytes is better. External memory cards are now better. Nevertheless, they are not as convenient to use. So I wouldn't plan with that.

Up-to-date software is important

I don't want to pass judgement here on whether Android or iOS is better. The operating systems from Google and Apple both have advantages and disadvantages. One advantage of iOS is that Apple reliably delivers software updates for five years. This means that with the iPhone, you don't have to worry as much about keeping the software up to date.

The situation is different with Android. Here, each manufacturer has to develop and deliver the updates for their smartphones themselves - and this works to varying degrees. That's why it's important that your smartphone has the latest version of Android. Android 12 was released in autumn 2021. However, the selection of models with Android 12 is still small to cling to. That's why a smartphone with Android 11 is still acceptable for me as a new device until spring 2022, but from April 2022 at the latest there will be no way around Android 12. Android 13 is likely to be released in autumn 2022 and the game will repeat itself.

Google promises five years of updates for its latest Pixel smartphones. Other manufacturers have also recently significantly extended the periods for software updates - at least for the top models. Huawei is a special case due to the US boycott and forced renunciation of Google services: the Chinese manufacturer is currently working with its own solutions and Android. With HarmonyOS, Huawei's own operating system could be used on its smartphones.

Ports for power and music

USB-C has become the standard for charging ports. And that's a good thing. This connection is technologically more advanced than the old micro USB connection. That's why it can still be found in particularly inexpensive smartphones, but even there you should steer clear of it. Even in the lower price ranges, there are enough models with a USB-C port. Apple is still going its own way with the Lightning connector, and if you want an iPhone, there is currently no way around it.

The headphone connection has become a special feature. Many manufacturers are dispensing with it and utilising the space gained in the housing differently. As Bluetooth headphones are widely used and sound output is also possible via USB-C - provided you have headphones with a USB-C plug and they are compatible - this is not a problem in principle. However, if you absolutely want to continue using your favourite headphones with a 3.5 mm plug, you must select the corresponding connection in the filters.

Display resolution and refresh rates

How big the display and therefore the smartphone should be is purely a matter of taste. There are differences between the various screen technologies, but in the end the resolution is the most important criterion for me and not the screen technology. LCD, AMOLED or P-OLED is of secondary importance to me, but it is important that your new smartphone has a full HD resolution. In other words, at least 1080 pixels as the smallest resolution. You shouldn't settle for anything less. However, you don't necessarily need more, or it doesn't make for a sharper picture on a smartphone display.

A refresh rate of 60 hertz is still common, but displays with 90 or 120 hertz are now common on top smartphones. This value indicates how often the image refreshes per second. Higher values make it appear more fluid during movements. Higher frequencies sound great in theory and can look great in practice. However, only a few apps support the high refresh rates and not every smartphone can do this with its highest display resolution. That's why more than the usual 60 hertz is not yet a relevant criterion for me when choosing a smartphone.

Camera: megapixels don't matter

You can't tell whether a smartphone camera is good just by looking at the data sheet. The number of megapixels is not a suitable quality criterion. 12 or 108 megapixels - it doesn't matter! Much more important is the software and what it does with the images. For this, I can only refer you to our tests.

Only if a wide-angle or telephoto lens is important to you, you can then narrow down the selection. Small restriction: These secondary lenses only achieve the image quality of the main camera on a few smartphones.

Battery and fast charging technologies

The typical smartphone lasts a day on a single charge. For larger batteries and longer runtimes in your smartphone, you either have to sacrifice functions or live with the fact that the smartphone is larger than others. The big leaps in battery technology are yet to come.

There is therefore only one rough guideline: the battery of your new smartphone should have a capacity of at least 3000 mAh. Exceptions also prove this rule: Apple has managed to make the interaction between hardware and software in its iPhones so efficient that they achieve similar battery life to Android models with smaller batteries.

As progress with the batteries themselves is slow, smartphone manufacturers have discovered fast-charging technologies for themselves. In other words, if the battery doesn't last forever, charging should at least be quick. It is therefore worth buying a smartphone with a fast charging function.

Hardware

Of course, it feels good to have a powerful chipset and a lot of RAM in your smartphone, but even the cheapest smartphones can cope with everyday applications such as messengers, Instagram or banking apps. Only the loading times of the apps are sometimes longer. Only for some graphically complex games or computing-intensive applications such as video editing do you definitely need more power. But the real difference between the mid-range and top models is not as big as the manufacturers tell us in their adverts.

Or to put it another way: with a cheap smartphone, you quickly get annoyed by hardware that is too slow. In the mid-range you get the best value for money and with the top devices you spend a relatively large amount of money for the extra computing power.

NFC for mobile payment

GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are standard features of smartphones. However, "Near Field Communication", or NFC for short, is not. Again, it is the low-cost models where manufacturers try to reduce costs by not using an NFC chip. However, NFC now has an important function. This technology is used to process mobile payments with your smartphone. In other words, if you want to use Apple Pay, Google Pay and the like, your smartphone must have NFC.

5G is the standard

There is no way around 5G. In 2022, finding a 4G model among the new smartphones will be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

If I now feed these specifications - current Android version, at least 64 or 128 gigabytes of storage space, USB-C port - into our filters, the following lists of currently popular models in different price ranges emerge:

Android up to 200 euros / francs

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Android up to 400 euros / francs

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Up to 600 euros / francs

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without price limit

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If you are only interested in the iPhone, I can recommend this guide: