Mobile Phone Buyers' Guide

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Mobile Phone Buyers' Guide

Prasad Naik, Sep 25, 2009 1738 hrs IST

A guide to help you choose the best phone that suits your need and budget

With a range of offers and price discounts on products, the festive season always brings masses to the stores. Soon shops will be overflowing with gadget lovers, who have been waiting to lay their hands on the latest and the best gadgets that suit their budget.

But more often than not most people don't have an exact idea of what they are going to buy and often end up buying something that the shopkeeper suggests; a suggestion driven more by the commission he would earn than the actual need of the customer. Some consumers pick up gadgets by looking at the spec sheet. This, as we know by experience, is one of the most inaccurate ways to judge something.

Here at Techtree, it is our job to ensure that you buy only the best that is available in your budget. So, today we put together a list of mobile phones that are the best of the lot, the cream of the crop. All you have to do is sit back and go through the list, so that when you do go to the shop to buy yourself a phone, you have a clear idea of what you'll be buying and how much you'll be spending.

Let me tell how we are going to go about our little guide here. We have categorized phones based on different budgets. Under a specific budget we have picked four phones from four categories; best music phone, best camera phone, best business phone and the best all-round phone. The first three categories are pretty much self-explanatory. The fourth one will house phones that might not necessarily excel in any particular area. However, it is their overall performance that won our hearts, which is why we are mentioning them.

So if you are someone who just wants a good phone in a particular range without expecting great performance in the camera or music playback department, then these are the phones to consider.

So with that out of the way, let's go through the guide.

Phones under Rs. 10,000:

Best Camera Phone - Sony Ericsson C510 (Rs. 10,000)

A 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, lens cover and the Cyber-shot name on top. The Sony Ericsson C510 has all the ingredients that make a good camera phone. And, it's not just good on paper. The camera performs well even in real life and we found the camera performance the best in the segment. In fact, the camera performance was better than even the more expensive Sony Ericsson phones such as the C903 and even the W995, which only have higher resolution but poor quality. The camera software also has plenty of features such as Smile detection and Face detection. For camera phone lovers there is nothing better that you can buy in this budget. The phone is priced at Rs. 10,000.

Best Music Phone - Nokia 5130 XpressMusic (Rs. 5,800)

The younger sibling of the best-selling Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, the Nokia 5130 incorporates nearly all facets of its older brother, save the slim design. It has a QVGA display, which is a rarity in this segment. A 3.5mm headphone jack and dedicated music key make it crystal clear that when it comes to playing music this phone means business. The superb audio quality just confirms it. This is basically the best music phone that you can buy for as little as Rs. 5,800 and one that will finally rid you of having to carry around your iPod.

Best All-round Phone - Samsung Star (Rs. 9,400)

Once an expensive novelty, full touchscreen phones have now become a common sight. This is mostly because of low-cost touchscreen phones like the Samsung Star. But don't think that low-cost means high compromise, as Samsung has packed the Star with a fair amount of features.

For starters there is a 3.0" WQVGA full touchscreen display. You'll have a hard time finding a phone with such a large display at this price. The Star is also a quad band GSM handset and comes with Bluetooth connectivity. The Star utilizes Samsung's TouchWiz UI that has features such as widgets, etc. Overall for the price the Samsung Star offers good all-round performance and gets our recommendation for the same.