If you generally use your mobile phone for calls and texts only, and aren’t particularly worried about internet, cameras or maps, then you can take your pick when it comes to mobiles - your focus will only be on the kind of tariff you have.
Even when you pick the best basic mobile phones with only the key functions, you’ll still get a range of useful tools such as a diary, a calculator and an alarm clock.
Powered by the Android, Windows Phone and iOS operating systems, the best smartphones often feature hefty price tags.
But mid-range and even cheaper smartphones are available.
These will feature a good proportion of the same features, but with smaller screens and less powerful cameras and processors than the top-of-the-range models
These days every phone has a camera, but all phone cameras are not equal. Anything but.To get the best phone camera, make sure it has autofocus or you’ll find it quite limited. If you’re keen on the odd selfie or are buying for a teenager, you’ll make to make sure it has a front-facing camera. Some phones leave this out.
Megapixels tell you the resolution of a camera, not how good it is, but generally speaking most phones cameras of eight megapixels or above are quite good.
If screen quality is your top concern, we recommend making sure your phone has an IPS or OLED display. These are screen technologies that pretty much ensure a fairly good screen experience. These details should be available on the product page of a phone maker’s website.
For a real top-end screen, you’ll want one with at least 1080p resolution. Having a phone with the same resolution as a 50-inch TV used to seem crazy, but now it’s a norm among more expensive phones.
Another sacrifice of some lower-cost phones is a front camera, also known as the selfie cam to some. It’s not a feature we personally find a day-to-day essential, but it certainly is to some. Some recent phones even offer quite high-quality 5-megapixel front cameras for super-selfies.
Many phones let you expand their internal storage using a memory card, a microSD card to be exact. If you want to watch films or use your phone as a music player, it’s a good idea to get one with expandable memory. Memory cards are generally much cheaper than buying a phone with more storage, and capacities go up to 128GB.