Okay, let me show you something interesting. This is the upcoming Nord 4. It will launch in India soon for 30,000–35,000, and the Antutu score is 14,79,000. Again, Moto H50 Pro, same price. However, the Antutu score is nearly half. But wait, picture abhi baaki hai mere dost. This is the Poco X6 Pro, 25,000. Much lesser than these two, but see Antutu scores of 13,00,000. What? Like, if I graph it out here, a 25,000 score is here, and a 30,000 score is here, and another 30,000 score is here, like, huh, is processor still the most important thing while you buy a smartphone in 2024 or are there other factors to consider? Or, simply put, how do you buy the perfect smartphone in 2024? The answer? This article. Like, we have tried about 100+ smartphones now and visited the service centers of each phone company, and this is the only video you need to watch to buy the perfect smartphone. Welcome to another episode of TW Explains, and we’ll talk from our practical experience, not just by reading spec sheets. If you read spec sheets, subscribe so we don’t have to.
Let’s start with the first thing that you’ll notice after unboxing the design. This is one area where I would say it has seen big improvements in the budget segment. Phones like this Realme 12X or even this Redmi 12 cost around 10,000 rupees, and they all have similar build-wise features. Plastic body, plastic frame, headphone jack, and hybrid SIM card slot, meaning two SIM cards or one SIM plus one micro SD card. The good thing is that the phones look very nice. I mean, see this Realme 12x? It looks like a premium phone. Now, the higher you go in price, the build starts to get better and better. At 20,000, like this Lava or Infinix, you get a curved display. I’ll come to display specs in just a moment, but this curviness in the phones makes it easy to hold and fun to watch videos in, and overall, it feels premium. Going up to around 25 to 30,000, this is where you start to see extra features being added on. Phones like the Nothingphone 2A give you a unique glyph light, or take the Moto H50 Pro, for instance. It has a vegan leather finish, so it is grippy to hold, plus you also get a metal frame. Quick question: do you know which was the first phone to have a vegan leather finish? Like, let us know in the comment section. Now, if I move up the price, like the OnePlus 12R or even this S23 Ultra, only two features are added to the build quality: one is the glass back, and the second is better glass protection or IP rating. Other than this, the design of the phones may change from brand to brand, but the functional features of the build remain the same. Now, it’s your choice. How important is building quality to you? For me, 25–30,000 is my sweet spot for design because, at the end of the day, we will all just buy a case. Now, for a lot of us, our phones are our primary source of watching movies or the IPL. So display is one aspect that is very important to me because no matter what you do with the phone, you’ll always be looking at it, right? And in that aspect, I would say there are a few things I would always recommend. Like number one, try to get an AMOLED screen. I know this is common knowledge by now, but let me demonstrate. This phone has an LCD, and this one has an AMOLED. If I turn off the lights, I see that the blacks on the LCD look gray, whereas they are completely black on the AMOLED. So, watching movies on an AMOLED display is always good, plus you also get always on display, so that’s a bonus. 2. Ensure that the display is Full HD+. In normal language, it means 1080p.
Now, I know that the higher you go on this expensive Vivo X100 Pro, you get support for 2K or even 4K displays in smartphones, but honestly, I’ve used all of these in real life. Hands down, 1080p is absolutely good. The amount of money you have to pay for those 2K and 4K displays is not worth it, in my opinion, and number 3 would be refresh rate. Here, have a look side by side in slow motion; this is running at 60 Hz, and this is at 120 Hz. See, the 120 Hz looks so smooth. So scrolling and all of that feels more fluid; let any fruit company tell you anything, but it should be 90 or 120 Hz. And most phones are about 20,000: Motorola, iQOO, nothing, Realme, Samsung—all of them have these three features. Now if you go higher, like this OnePlus 12, you get something called LTPO display. So see here if I’m scrolling the display; it is at 120 Hz, but when I am not doing anything, the display comes back at 1 Hz. This is very well refreshed, and it saves battery life. It is a good-to-have feature. Now to explain the camera, let’s take three smartphones in three different price segments. At 11,000, we have the Realme 11X, and at around 30–35,000, we have the upcoming Nord 4, and then we have the flagship S24. During the daytime, you’ll see all three phones take decent photos. Yes, the Realme 12X is average, but it is not bad. Photos are possible. However, if you lower the lights, this is where the money kicks in. Like clearly stated, the Nord 4 and the S24 have better picture quality than the Realme 12x, which is completely understandable. In fact, the higher the price, the better the camera features that you get. As I see it, there are a few things to know about when picking a phone for a camera. Firstly, megapixels aren’t everything. We have done a dedicated video on that. We have tested 12 to 200 megapixel phones. If you want, you can go check that video out after watching this one. Also, if you are into selfie videos, making reads, and all, ensure the phone does 4K selfie video. And finally, its common knowledge: the depth camera and the 2 MP macro camera are useless. Rather, having an ultra-wide-angle lens or even a telephoto lens is better. As a ground rule, under 20–25k, you get one good main camera; the rest is below average. Under 30k, you start seeing a good main camera as well as a good ultra-wide-angle lens or telephoto lens. And then, for good videos, you’ll have to spend somewhere between $40 and $50,000. See, frankly speaking, this camera segment is so huge that we can do a full-dedicated video on it. Let us know in the comment section if you want a detailed video on that. Now performance is a very interesting story here; let me go one by one. At around 10,000, phones usually have a CPU that gets the job done. For this Redmi 12, for example, regular stuff like phone calls, watching videos, casual subway surfing, etc. is fine, but if you push it, like playing VGMI or even photo editing, it will struggle. At around $20–25,000, you will get good performance, but at a bargain.
Like take this Poco X6 Pro for instance, for the price, the performance is off the charts. Like in our testing, we could play Genshin Impact very smoothly, plus this phone is tuned mainly for performance. So you also get extra features like frame interpolation and all of that. However, all of this comes at the cost of a mediocre camera. So see here: in all the photos that we took, the skin tone is very off. Around the 30-35 price point, you have two choices. On one hand, you can go all in on a performance-centric phone like this Nord 4. See, the Android 4s are almost like a flagship phone, but you will not get extra features. Or you have phones like the Moto Edge 50 Pro, whose performance is decent and you get a lot of extra features like an IP rating, wireless charging, and excellent software. So in this range, you at least have an option: more performance or more features; the choice is yours. Beyond this, which is above 40,000, pick any phone, and chances are you will have a very good performance. That’s because phones either have A, a flagship chip, or B, last year’s flagship chip. And both of these are more than enough to play mobile games like BGMI, Genshin Impact, or even do video editing. Now, when it comes to software, here price doesn’t matter. I would say there are two major sentiments we all look for. First is the Android version, come years of update. As of 2024, all new phones, whether budget or expensive, should come with Android 14 right out of the box, but when it comes to updates, the story is different. This is the Samsung A52s, which launched in 2021 with Android 11. Samsung promised 3 years of software updates, and I see it is currently running on Android 14. So from our experience, brands like Samsung, Google, OnePlus, and all others do deliver on their update promises. That being said, other brands, like Motorola or Xiaomi, do promise updates, but they give them very late.
See this Moto S30? It is still running on Android 13, which is one year old. And the second thing, when it comes to software, is bloatware. Now, I’ll make it simple and straight for you. If you want a clean, ad-free software experience, go for phones like nothing, Motorola, OnePlus, and, of course, Google. That is top-tier. Then you have other brands, like Samsung. They don’t give you ads, but you do get a few first-party programs, some notifications, and all of that. And then you have phones from Redmi, Realme, Vivo, and iQoo. You get tons of third-party bloatware. See this Vivo X100 Pro. This is a flagship phone, and even this has ads. So, I’ll make things simple for you regarding software with this tier. And last, the biggest point is the service center experience. So, last year, we did this video on the smartphone service center experience, and we also did a green line issue on the OnePlus service center. Now, service center experience is highly dependent on the area you live in, but here’s how we would rate the service center experience of brands in tiers based on our experience throughout the year. Other than these, there are a few common things that I should mention. In 2024, almost all new phones—about 12,000—will be 5G, and most phones should easily last you one day of use on battery. Few exceptions are there with compact phones or flip phones. And yeah, that was our take on what you should look out for when buying a smartphone.
