Often when you want to buy a phone it is hard to decide which one to pick because there are so many options.
So many things to decide !!!
For illustration we will use the Samsung Galaxy S series phones.
I built a table with basic specs (below) that will help us make the decision.
You can also better see the progression of phone specs to decide at which point you can make the compromise of price vs performance.
The discussion below concentrates on persons who does not need special features such as ginormous screen, super duper CPU speed or million dollars movie like camera . I may extend it in the future.
Decisions, decisions !!! First here are some ideas to help you decide.
You definitely are not picking the earliest versions of Galaxy S unless you are collector, so we should look for versions Galaxy S8 and above.
If you are Gamer then the decision is almost made for you. You have to pick from the top of the line.
In case you looking to make compromise between price and specs your main factors to decide should be Screen size, Storage and Battery life/endurance and oomph.
In this day and age for the average user the CPU and the Memory size are adequate on almost any 2-3 year old phone, unless of course you are using some specialized software or Games. That’s why we are excluding them from our decision early in the selection process.
The case is similar for the Camera, if you want to record quality video buy professional equipment, don’t fiddle with a phone.
If you don’t want bulky phone then skip the larger screens.
if you carry charger or stay at places where charging is easily accessible (home, work) then you can make some compromise on battery.
if you don’t take too many videos then pick smaller storage … most new devices have enough capacity for images and even videos.
if you have a habit of downloading the data from your phone often then lower storage wont be a problem. In general we will see that 64GB is more than enough, which should probably make our decision easier.
| Models | Display | Storage/GB | RAM/GB | Battery/mAh | endurance/h | announced |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | 4 | 16,32 | 1 | 1650, 1800 | 2010-03-01 | |
| S2 | 4.3 - 4.5 | 16,32 | 1 | 1650, 1800 | 2011-02-13 | |
| S3 | 4.8 | 16,32,64 | 1, 1.5, 2 | 2100 | 2012-05-03 | |
| S4 | 5 | 16,32,64 | 2 | 2600 | 73 | 2013-03-14 |
| S5 | 5.1 | 16,32 | 2,3 | 2800 | 83 | 2014-02-24 |
| S6 | 5.1 | 32,64,128 | 3 | 2550 | 73 | 2015-03-01 |
| * S6 Edge | 5.1 | 32,64,128 | 3 | 2600 | 2015-03-01 | |
| * S6 Edge+ | 5.7 | 32,64,128 | 4 | 3000 | 2015-08-13 | |
| S7 | 5.1 | 32,64,128 | 4 | 3000 | 80 | 2016-02-21 |
| * S7 Edge | 5.1 | 32,64,128 | 4 | 3600 | 2016-02-21 | |
| S8 | 5.8 | 64,128 | 4,6 | 3000 | 84 | 2017-03-27 |
| * S8+ | 6.2 | 64,128 | 4,6 | 3500 | ||
| S9 | 5.8 | 64,128,256 | 4 | 3000 | 78 | 2018-02-25 |
| * S9+ | 6.2 | 64,128,256 | 6 | 3500 | ||
| S10 | 6.1 | 128,256,512 | 8 | 3400 | 79 | 2019-02-20 |
| * S10e | 5.8 | 128,256,512 | 6,8 | 3100 | 83 | --- |
| * S10+ | 6.4 | 128,512, 1024 | 8,12 | 4100 | 91 | --- |
| * S10 5G | 6.7 | 256,512 | 8 | 4500 | --- | |
| * S10 Lite | 6.7 | 128 | 6,8 | 4500 | 110 | 2020-01-01 |
| S20, (5G*) | 6.2 | 128 | 8, 12* | 4000 | 71 | 2020-02-11 |
| * S20+, (5G*) | 6.7 | 128, 256* | 8,12* | 4500 | 87 | --- |
| * S20 Ultra, (5G*) | 6.9 | 128,256,512 | 12,16 | 5000 | 87* | --- |
| * S20 FE | 6.5 | 256 | 6,8 | 4500 | --- | |
| S21 | 6.2 | 128,256 | 8 | 4000 | 2021-01-14 | |
| * S21 Plus, 5G* | 6.7 | 128,256 | 8 | 4800 | 93* | --- |
| * S21 Ultra, 5G* | 6.8 | 128,256,512 | 12,16 | 5000 | 114* | --- |
| S22 |
Storage space
Now let’s look at the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry we will skip the math exam at the end.
if we assume average size of stored image in the phone to be ~3 to 6 MB then here are the capacity of different storage sizes :
- 4 GB : ~ 680 – 1360 images
- 6 GB : ~ 1020 – 2040 images
- 8 GB : ~ 1360 – 2730 images
- 12 GB : ~ 2040 – 4090 images
- 16 GB : ~ 2730 – 5460 images
- 32 GB : ~ 5460 – 10920 images
- 64 GB : ~ 10920 – 21840 images
- 128 GB : ~ 21840 – 43690 images
- 256 GB : ~ 43690 – 87380 images
- 512 GB : ~ 87380 – 174760 images
Now you only have to check how many images you currently have on your phone. Think first do you expect to store the same number of images or more. Pick the new number and then add let say 30% on top of that for other stuff and you have your magic number for Storage memory.
For 64 GB and above the numbers get ridiculous, to fill the memory you have to take a shot every minute for ~8 days non-stop … So any phone S9 and later version is good to go.
how about videos … it depends on the selected resolution, below we have approximate videos time length per GB.
| Resolution | Bitrate | 1 minute | Recording Duration per GB |
| 4K (UHD) | 20 Mbps | 84MB | 12 minutes |
| 1080p (FHD) | 5 Mbps | 20MB | 50 minutes |
| 720p (HD) | 1 Mbps | 5MB | 3.5 hours |
| 480p (SD) | 500 Kbps | 2MB | 8 Hours |
The thing with videos is that you have to backup them often i.e. not look to store all your videos on your phone.
Keeping this in mind we should think of may be the capability to store 3 to 20 videos which for the lowest 64GB case at 1080p and 30% reserved for other stuff will be :
- 3 videos each ~14 hours long
- 20 videos each ~2 hours long
again plenty enough. So 64GB is OK.
Battery
What about the Battery ?
It is good to have better mAh, but what is more important is to have better endurance (I got this measure from gsmarena.com).
Endurance tells us how long the battery will generally last, mAh just shows us how powerful the battery is. But if it is used inefficiently then what good is it.
Screen size
Screen size is about personal preference. There are two competing questions you have to ask yourself :
- Ergonomic – the size should be as small as possible, so it can fit comfortably in a pocket
- Visual – the size should be as large as possible, so that we have more space for app elements and better reading and writing experience.
Conclusion
When I started this article I didn’t expect that I will come to that conclusion but it seems apart for Visual reasons the single most important thing for the average user is BATTERY ENDURANCE.
