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Thinking about getting a smart phone?If you don’t already own a smart phone, maybe you’ve at least heard of them and wondered what they’re all about and maybe you’ve even thought about why someone would want to own a smart phone. Ten years ago people were probably asking themselves the same questions about broadband connections and big screen LCD televisions. How times have changed. What is a smart phone?A smart phone is a cell phone that combines the conventional tasks of making phone calls and sending text messages with other functions you’d find on a computer like email and web browsing. Features like touch screens, high quality still/video cameras, GPS maps and even built-in access to social network sites like Facebook are also becoming more and more common. Like a computer, it’s possible to customise a smart phone to your needs by installing applications. In the case of an Android smart phone you’d have access to around 360,000 applications from the Android Market covering games, tools, books, entertainment and many more categories with over two thirds of them free to download! Why would I want a smart phone?Smart phones are all about the convenience of having a lot of functions on-the-go and at your fingertips. Most of us own a cell phone, have an email address, use the internet, own a digital camera and know how handy GPS navigation is. A smart phone can give you all of those things in one device. Imagine being away from your house and getting a calendar reminder of a dinner appointment with a friend, reading the emailed invite your friend sent you, being given turn-by-turn GPS directions to your friends place, browsing the internet to find a local restaurant with good reviews, taking photos of your night out and then instantly posting them onto Facebook for your other friends to see. All of that’s possible just using a smart phone. What’s the best smart phone for me?It really just boils down to personal preference. You can think of a smart phone purchase as you might think about buying a new car. Before you go out and visit car yards you might already have an idea about things like the car’s make, size, add-ons like air conditioning and a CD player, even the colour. When it comes to smart phones it’s really just a different set of considerations. You may want to ask yourself questions such as:
What smart phones do TelstraClear sell?We’ve put the following table together so you can compare the details of the different makes and models of smart phone that we sell. If you’re not sure about what some of the details mean, refer to the glossary below the table. Basic specifications
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* May require the installation of a 3rd party application ** Not all applications are compatible with all smart phones GlossaryOperating SystemSymbian, Windows Phone 7, Android and Blackberry OS are all operating systems designed for smart phones. You can draw parallels between a smart phone operating system and others like Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS used with desktop computers and laptops. They all do similar things and are all designed to make your phone or computer easier to use. Processor PowerIn general, the higher the processor power, the more you’ll be able to do and the quicker you’ll be able to do it. Processor power is measured in units of Mega Hertz (MHz) and Giga Hertz (GHz). Giga Hertz are bigger than Mega Hertz e.g. a phone with a 680MHz processor is less powerful than a phone with a 1GHz processor. In addition to this it’s possible to have a number of “cores” or processors running together. For instance, if you had a phone with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, your phone would have two processors running at the same time effectively doubling the amount of power your phone has. Camera QualityCamera quality is measured in units of MP or ‘megapixels’. Pixels are the tiny dots that make up an image. One MP is 1 million pixels. The number of MP is also referred to as the “resolution”. So if the camera’s quality is rated at 3 MP this means that a photo that you’d take with that camera is made up of 3 million individual pixels. The higher the number of pixels, or resolution, the more detailed a photo will have and therefore the better the quality. Video QualityLike camera quality, video quality is partly dependent on the resolution but also relies on a measurement called fps or frames per second. All moving images, even the ones you see in cinemas or on television, are made up of individual still images or ‘frames’ (fps is 'frames per second'). The more frames shown within a 1 second period, the smoother the moving image appears. QVGA and VGA are both basic low resolution video formats with VGA being the higher quality. 720p and 1080p are both HD (high definition) video formats where1080p offers a higher resolution, however any HD format provides great video quality.
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| Lower the screen brightness | Smart phone screens have a tiny light source behind them to illuminate the screen. Lowering the output of the light source can help reduce the power consumption of your smart phone. |
| How fast do you really need to go? | Smart phone internet speeds are referred to as either 2G (GSM) or 3G (WCDMA) with 3G being faster. Having your phone switched to 2G uses less power than 3G and for most applications 2G speeds are perfectly fine. |
| Don’t need it? Turn it off! | Smart phones have a lot of functions that sit in stand-by waiting to be used such as Bluetooth and WiFi. Even in stand-by they will use power. Disable these functions until you need to use them. |
| Bundled apps aren’t always best | 3rd party applications can often do the same things more efficiently than the ones that came bundled with your phone. For instance, some 3rd party web browsers reduce the amount of data your phone needs to download. Not only does this use less power, but this can also mean faster browsing. |
| Daily recharge | Getting into the habit of recharging your phone every day is a good practice. Some people use their smart phones as alarm clocks so it becomes second nature to put their phone on to charge before going to bed. |
