Is there any one of these features that is most important to you?

[geagle63]

Which factor do you find most important when buying a phone?

1 how much storage the device
has.
2How good the cameras are on a device.
3 the battery life of a device.

(Had to edit this to say which ONE choice is the deciding factor.)

 

[rchapman80]

Difficult to answer and everyone will be different. For me my top three, in this order are:

1. Screen - This goes for everything I own with a screen. You look at it every time you use it. I want it to look great.
2. Battery - Must get me through most days. With fast charging a thing now, this is becoming a little less a must for me. Again YMMV.
3. Camera - We have a child and I am constantly taking photos and video of her. The camera must be good.

Anything else is just gravy.

 

[hallux]

The Pixel 4a has NFC. I use it frequently with Google Pay.

For some reason I thought it was missing from spec sheets.

Know what? I'm thinking of the Motorola devices available on Fi (my carrier).

 

[tadpoles]

I didn't even consider NFC. I definitely want that, and it's what has prevented me from buying the Pixel 4a to replace my Pixel 2XL.

I agree but that would lead me to saying I have to have Samsung Pay. Which means....

 

[geagle63]

Just looking for a general consensus on what people considered to be the most important feature on their phone

 

[sg1003]

Which factor do you find most important when buying a phone?

1 how much storage the device
has.
2How good the cameras are on a device.
3 the battery life of a device.

(Had to edit this to say which ONE choice is the deciding factor.)

Hardware choices are plenty based on your budget. So no issues on that for me. But a phone is made smart by its software. I badly want to move to Android because I love it’s hardware. But unfortunately I can’t because I hate the WhatsApp app in Android. Whatsapp is the most used app on at least 80% of the phones. Whatsapp app on Android feels like a webpage compared to the iOS app experience. I can’t even download a picture without saving it into the gallery in Android. So Android WhatsApp treats a 1000$ phone and a 100$phone the same way spoiling the user experience of a high end phone. So for now I hate to use Android phone though I badly want to move to Android due to the lovely hardware choices I get. The whatsapp app user experience in android is the only thing keeping away from switching to android even though I hate iPhones and badly want to move to Android . If i was the head of Android, the user experience head of Android would have been dead by now!

 

[BergerKing]

Which factor do you find most important when buying a phone?

1 how much storage the device
has.
2How good the cameras are on a device.
3 the battery life of a device.

(Had to edit this to say which ONE choice is the deciding factor.)

Made an edit in the title to reflect the question you were asking.

 

[VidJunky]

I see a variety of answers throughout the comments.

If there's an SD storage isn't really an issue for me but I do prefer 256 or larger. I mean that should be the minimum these days anyway.

I always watch the camera reviews so I'd have to say that it somewhat important to me but I don't really load up on photos. I guess that would mean it's important to have it available when needed but not so important that it's a deal breaker.

Battery life of those three is probably most important to me. It's more of a deal changer than a deal breaker though. I mean I spend so much time in my car or in places where charging is possible that if really needed I could get a little boost if I had a less than stellar battery but finding a phone with a great battery could be the deciding factor if picking between multiple devices.

Really the deciding factors for me however is the hardware. Give me a good chip set, good antenna, beautiful screen and wrap it up in a quality body with a decent battery and I'm good.

 

[tadpoles]

Hardware choices are plenty based on your budget. So no issues on that for me. But a phone is made smart by its software. I badly want to move to Android because I love it’s hardware. But unfortunately I can’t because I hate the WhatsApp app in Android. Whatsapp is the most used app on at least 80% of the phones. Whatsapp app on Android feels like a webpage compared to the iOS app experience. I can’t even download a picture without saving it into the gallery in Android. So Android WhatsApp treats a 1000$ phone and a 100$phone the same way spoiling the user experience of a high end phone. So for now I hate to use Android phone though I badly want to move to Android due to the lovely hardware choices I get. The whatsapp app user experience in android is the only thing keeping away from switching to android even though I hate iPhones and badly want to move to Android . If i was the head of Android, the user experience head of Android would have been dead by now!

Just keep in mind that its likely easier to develop for iOS hardware because the least common denominator is always known. With Android hardware its hard for a developer to always know what the least common denominator is so they wisely design with lower end hardware because there's not as many high-end devices deployed as we in the first-world might think or hope.

 

[B. Diddy]

I can’t even download a picture without saving it into the gallery in Android

Welcome to Android Central! If this is your main complaint about WhatsApp, you could always use a file manager app to add a blank file titled .nomedia to the directory WhatsApp uses as a download directory, which instructs the system to ignore that directory when scanning for photos to add to the gallery database.

 

[sg1003]

Well I tried this option. Ok to a certain extend. But it also doesn’t allow you to copy and paste a picture from one chat to another. Which is possible in iOS. And the overall interface and look of WhatsApp sucks in Android. If you see the numbers Android has 80% share of smart phones and at least 80% is using WhatsApp/ so the number of users in android is huge and it is a pity the interface is so badly made in android despite the huge number of users.

 

[the_boon]

My most important feature: Physical keyboard

Most important feature of the ones on your list: Battery life

 

[Morty2264]

My most important feature: Physical keyboard

Most important feature of the ones on your list: Battery life

Ah, physical keyboards... I miss those days.

 

[VidJunky]

Ah, physical keyboards... I miss those days.

That's what I was thinking when I read that comment. There was a time when I almost didn't get a smart phone because I had been getting devices with physical keyboards and didn't want to give them up. There was even a device or two with slide out keyboards that I considered before braving the bold new world.

I guess I'm resistant to new or maybe even change until I actually do it. I remember when Swype was a becoming a big deal and resisted it. Now I do nothing but swipe and don't get other people who don't. LOL.

 

[Morty2264]

That's what I was thinking when I read that comment. There was a time when I almost didn't get a smart phone because I had been getting devices with physical keyboards and didn't want to give them up. There was even a device or two with slide out keyboards that I considered before braving the bold new world.

I guess I'm resistant to new or maybe even change until I actually do it. I remember when Swype was a becoming a big deal and resisted it. Now I do nothing but swipe and don't get other people who don't. LOL.

I too found myself resisting some of the "newer" trends that came out. Curved screens! Notches! In-display fingerprint sensors! Now, I have all of those things on my S10!

 

[Laura Knotek]

That's what I was thinking when I read that comment. There was a time when I almost didn't get a smart phone because I had been getting devices with physical keyboards and didn't want to give them up. There was even a device or two with slide out keyboards that I considered before braving the bold new world.

I guess I'm resistant to new or maybe even change until I actually do it. I remember when Swype was a becoming a big deal and resisted it. Now I do nothing but swipe and don't get other people who don't. LOL.

I too found myself resisting some of the "newer" trends that came out. Curved screens! Notches! In-display fingerprint sensors! Now, I have all of those things on my S10!

Me too! I didn't think I'd be able to adapt to VKB, but I found that it was very easy thanks to swipe style keyboard apps.

I also didn't think I'd like curved screens, notches or in-display fingerprint sensors; however, I'm using all of the above on my S10+, and I've had no issues with any of them. Adjusting to those new features ended up being much easier than I ever anticipated.

 

[anon(50597)]

Me too! I didn't think I'd be able to adapt to VKB, but I found that it was very easy thanks to swipe style keyboard apps.

I also didn't think I'd like curved screens, notches or in-display fingerprint sensors; however, I'm using all of the above on my S10+, and I've had no issues with any of them. Adjusting to those new features ended up being much easier than I ever anticipated.

It's not, generally, that people can't change or adapt, it's that they don't want to. It's the major cause of anxiety in our world.

 

[Morty2264]

It's not, generally, that people can't change or adapt, it's that they don't want to. It's the major cause of anxiety in our world.

I for one hate and fear change, so I see what you are saying. Though I like to get a phone from a different manufacturer whenever I upgrade, so there's that too. *shrugs*

 

[the_boon]

That's what I was thinking when I read that comment. There was a time when I almost didn't get a smart phone because I had been getting devices with physical keyboards and didn't want to give them up. There was even a device or two with slide out keyboards that I considered before braving the bold new world.

I guess I'm resistant to new or maybe even change until I actually do it. I remember when Swype was a becoming a big deal and resisted it. Now I do nothing but swipe and don't get other people who don't. LOL.

I adapted to tapping on glass just fine when everyone else was, and then after some time I just realized that while it did "work fine", it was not an enjoyable experience and I went back to real keyboards with the KEYone...and never looked back since.

As a primary phone, of course. I also have a big screen slab for media/camera purposes which is far better at all those things than my KEY2 could ever hope to be.

 

[J Dubbs]

It's not, generally, that people can't change or adapt, it's that they don't want to. It's the major cause of anxiety in our world.

I'm not sure it's anxiety as much as laziness.... I think that most folks like being comfortable with something, and don't want to have to "relearn" something new when they have the demands of the other parts of their lives taking up their time. But there is also the fear (oftentimes well founded) that change is going to break or take away something. Change is usually driven by cost savings which almost always takes something away...or makes you pay more for it. That would definitely instill anxiety lol.

 

[sakaar]

That's a hard one to answer. I'll answer in a slightly different way - battery life would be the least important factor for me, unless it was shockingly bad