The Ideal Smartphone



I'll start with the display. The human eye cannot distinguish individual pixels above 300 Pixels per inch (PPI). A display with a density of anything above 300 PPI is pointless. Period. (The exception being, when Virtual Reality headsets like the Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard are used, but I'll get back to that later).  




 Do you really need a phone with 4GB of RAM, a quad HD display, and an octacore processor? Do high end specs make an ideal smartphone? Let's look into each aspect of a smartphone and redefine how it can be "Ideal". 

 Display 

 Based on the screen size PPI can be calculated from this site. A 5" screen with a 720p display gives a PPI of 293 and this is pretty sharp to the eye. Using a 720p display instead of 1080p means can not only save on processing power (phone runs faster), but you can get more battery life for the day. A super AMOLED or an IPS display can get the job done. That doesn't make much of a difference.

 The density of a display depends on how close the display is to your face. A phone will always be in your hand, whereas a laptop is usually about 2-3 feet away from your face. Thus the lower resolution for the laptop. Having said this, Virtual Reality headsets need a high resolution display because the phone is literally about 5-8 cm from your face. So any pixels that are visible will provide a poor VR experience. 
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RAM 
The Zenfone 2, Moto X 2015, Samsung Note 4 and Galaxy S6 all have excess 3GB of RAM. Applications usage decides how much RAM needs to be used at a time. And games are the only area where RAM is extensively used. Android games have not yet reached a point where even 3GB of RAM gets completely used up. Maybe in a few years team, games will become more graphic intensive to utilize more RAM, but till then 2GB is more than sufficient to get by. 

 Processor 
I'm not going to judge this aspect too much, partly because mobile processors are evolving quickly to catch up with their desktop counterparts. Having said that, a processor should perform optimally. For example, a quad core Snapdragon processor performs quite the same or even better than a MediaTek octacore processor. But the cores in mobile processors are different from those in PCs. The Moto X 1st gen, had a 1.7 GHz Dual-Core Krait CPU, a natural language processor and a contextual computing processor. So more cores doesn't always mean better performance. 

Another factor in increasing performance is when the phone manufacturer makes their own processor. This provides a unified platform with very little fragmentation. Samsung implemented the Exynos chipset in their latest flagship (S6) and the result was spectacular.  

 Storage
Storage is user dependent, with a minimum of 8GB for the average user. Don't forget that the price increases with storage capacity. The option of expandable memory is a bonus. 

 Battery life
The bigger the battery, the more you'll love your phone. The Motorola DROID turbo has a massive 3900 mAh battery. You could easily get through two to three days of casual use on a single charge. The iPhone 6 on the other hand has very poor battery life. What then is the point of having a high end phone if you cannot spend more time on it without having to charge it throughout the day. 

 The Ideal Smartphone 
Having said all this, the perfect candidate for the Ideal Smartphone should be Apple's iPhone. The iPhone 6 has a pixel density of 325, its processor(Apple's A8) is optimized to work with the software (also Apple's). Excluding the pathetic battery life it is the perfect phone out there. Or is it? 



It fails to be so mainly because of its abysmal pricing. Apple seems to be under the impression that they can justify the cost with the "quality" of their products. I will not deny that they produce excellent products but that doesn't mean other companies do not make quality products(at considerably lower prices, OnePlus).   


Motorola released the Moto G first generation and redefined what an Ideal phone is. And they did it three times, with the third generation Moto G being a massive success. A 720p IPS display, a hefty 2470 mAh battery, quad core Snapdragon 410, 16GB storage and 2GB of RAM. Not to mention expandable storage and and IPX7 rating for water resistance with Gorilla Glass 3. It even has a decent 13MP back camera and 5MP front facing camera. All this bundled below Rs 15,000 has made this phone truly the Ideal Smartphone. 

So to conclude, the Ideal Smartphone should only need to be snappy and have good battery life. A decent screen, adequate storage and a camera are things we can adjust to. But a fast responsive phone is always worth the money.

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