Being a self confessed technologist, you bet I have a personal framework for buying a phone. It’s something that lets me indulge in the process of figuring out which is the best phone to buy for my needs; compared to the more accepted alternative of just grabbing the latest flagship the altar you worship: Android or iOS. I’m not very rigid with these rules, and I’m happy to amend them or modify the framework in light of new information, but this has been working fine for the past decade or so.

• Aim to get a phone that has been in the market for about a year: I’ve found this is the sweet spot of when the prices start trending downwards and you’re still able to get a just notch below top of the line features. This deal will continue to get better as more phone manufacturers pledge longer software updates. Even with recent revolutionary leaps like folding screens, I haven’t yet been tempted to shell out more for immediately grabbing a flagship. Waiting for a while means that I can score a very decent phone for a price that will be around 1000 USD – which is always my goto budget unless a particular device makes a compelling case for itself (so far, none have).
• Keep the phone for a minimum of 2 years: My idea is to keep the phone around as a daily driver for 2 years, if not more. I’m currently using an iPhone 13 Mini (launched Sep 2021, bought Oct 2022), and before that I was using a Samsung S10e (launched Mar 2019, bought Feb 2020). I guess this also indicates that I’m currently not in favour of the huge screen sizes being offered by the flagships, but I don’t have a set rule against it. However, I’m yet to indulge in getting a foldable – I know that my clumsy handling of the phone will mean that a foldable won’t last 2 years for me. I also pass off my old phone to someone else in need for free rather than go through the process of selling it off for a fraction of the funds, which I’m guessing is the environmentally friendly thing to do.
• Alternate between Android & iOS: I’d love to support Pine Phone or Librem, but currently they’re nowhere near the ideal combination of usability and value for money. This leaves the two giants in charge of the entire mobile computing landscape and I happily hop between them every couple of years, enjoying features offered by both but not locking myself down to either ecosystem. Surprisingly, I don’t have a favorite, there’s things that both camps do very well and other things where they suck – if I had to choose one, I would choose Android.

Considering the time spent everyday, your mobile phone is probably the most used personal computing device by a vast majority of people. In the human cyborg analogy, even though the bandwidth between your biological self and your mobile phone is quite weak right now, it’s still a vital organ. Do you enjoy evaluating different mobile computing devices, have any pro-tips or recommends to share? Please hit me up on social media, I might need a new one soon!