Strut, turn, hold that pose. Whew, don’t you look good with that smartphone. “Choices are made less about feature sets and more about what seems to be the hot phone to have,” University of Toronto computer science professor Eugene Fiume says of the urban market. “But that changes when you leave the city and things like coverage become more of an issue and a more careful choice must be made.”
Making the right buying decision starts by recognizing that while voice and texting are encoded and sent through a voice channel, email and web browsing go through a digital data connection. Importantly, a service that is currently giving you good voice connections on your cell phone may not be up to the job for a smartphone.
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The spectrum and coverage for voice versus data can be different, and usually the coverage for voice is wider than it is for data. Coverage is variable and changing, which is why you have to be aware of your local conditions, Fiume says.
That means you smartphone decision is actually two decisions in one.
“We have this issue of coverage, which is how effectively a particular carrier covers an area, and also how a particular phone responds to the carrier coverage,” Fiume said. “And the best way to get information on that is for someone to go to a local shop, because they will be able to give you better advice regarding local coverage than a central office.”
People using the handsets for work need to decide what kind of information they really want and whether they’re looking for or sending information.
“I might be more interested in simply getting information like weather data, traffic patterns or commodity prices, which means for a little bit of typing, you get a lot of information back,” Fiume said.
In that case, you might want an Apple product, as they are strictly touch phones. They are easy to use, with wide-spectrum coverage and maximized screen real estate which isn’t cluttered by a keyboard.
If you’re going to be sending information back and forth, however, then you might want something that has a built-in or slide-out keyboard, like a BlackBerry, Motorola, or HTC.
It’s also worth it to take the time just to hold the device, to make sure it’s the one for you.
“Everybody’s hands are different,” Fiume says, before warning, “Depending on the data plan, you’re going to be chained to this thing for potentially three years.”
Screen quality — not only how big, but also the brightness and resolution — is key no matter what you’re using the phone for, as you’ll need the brightest screen you can have for outdoor use.
“You want to make sure that you have a good screen and decent connection times so that you can look at a page,” says Mark Lepp, co-founder and business manager of FarmLink Marketing Solutions. “A lot of pages aren’t designed for mobile use, so you need something with decent speed that allows you to browse quickly.”
But browsing can be an expensive proposition without the right kind of data plan.
“Anybody that doesn’t have a data plan is just going to get creamed when they are looking at five or seven minute videos everyday,” said Bill Smith, chief operating officer of marketing consultant Ag-Chieve. “The data plan is key. Get a really good data plan where you’re paying a flat rate for access.”
Most data plans these days blend voice, data and messaging in some kind of package. With a smartphone, you’d be hard pressed to get voice data and messaging for less than $80 a month.
“As those packages catch up, a guy can have access to unlimited data and voice and be able to really basically use the phone like a little computer, and see, hear and access all the information that he otherwise would have to be at home on a broadband connection to see. That’s a lot of value in a small package,” says Smith. “It’s a considerable amount of money but it’s affordable, and if you look at it from a cost/return basis, staying on top of stuff and being able to pull the trigger at the right time, it can certainly pay for itself a couple times over.”
