CHOOSING A SMARTPHONE

                 Your smartphone is right up there with your wallet in importance — in fact, it can sometimes double as your wallet. As phones have added more features, they've become  an indispensable companion, helping you stay on top of email and social updates, take and share photos and videos, play music and games, and do a whole lot more. So we probably don't have to tell you that choosing the right phone is a big deal.

  Quick Tips

• Opt for an iPhone if you want a phone that's easy to use and gets both the hottest apps first and the timeliest software updates.
• Android is better if you want more hardware choice and more control over the user experience. 
• Get a phone with a 5-inch screen or smaller if one-hand use is important. Get a bigger screen if you like to watch a lot of video and play games.
• The camera has become the most important smartphone feature. Pay attention to specs like pixel size (in microns, bigger is better) and aperture (lower numbers are better) and ignore the megapixels. 
• If you want the most speed for games and multitasking, buy an Android phone with the latest Snapdragon820 processor and 4GB of RAM. The A9 chip in the iPhone 6s and the 6s Plus is also very speedy. A Snapdragon 615 chip is fine for mid-tier Android phones.
• Don’t settle for a smartphone with less than a 3,000 mAh battery if endurance is really important.
• 16GB phones are rip-off  unless you’re going to store most of your photos and files in the cloud. Get 32GB or more of storage if you plan to download lots of games or shoot 4K video.

Operating Systems:

ANDROID:

                

Android dominates worldwide sales of smartphones, and for good reason. You'll find many more choices than iOS when it comes to design, display size, specs, capabilities and price. Plus, Android is an open OS, which means it's easy to customize awesome launchers and widgets, while giving you a choice of keyboards and more

WINDOWS:

Windows Phone has never caught on, and Windows 10 is off to a slow start. The most compelling features are universal apps and Continuum. Universal apps allow developers to create one app for Windows 10 on the desktop and mobile, which should grow Microsoft’s anemic selection in the Windows Store. Continuum enables you to run Windows 10 Mobile on the desktop with a compatible dock using such phones as the lumia 950.

iOS:

iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that presently powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

SCREEN SIZE:

              Although bigger screens are in vogue, you'll still find a wide variety of display sizes. And size is only part of the story.

Small Screen (Less Than 4.5 Inches)

The main reason to buy a small-screen smartphone is for its compact design. You won't have to stretch your thumb to reach anything. This size range is falling out of favor as more and more people gravitate toward larger canvases for media consumption and gaming, but small phones like the iphoneSE  and the Sony Xperia Z5 compact are both powerful and affordable.

Medium Screen (4.5 to 5.4 Inches)

This has become the smartphone sweet spot, with such devices as the iphone6s (4.7 inches), the HTC10 (5.2 inches), the Galaxy S7 (5.1 inches) and the LG G5 (5.3 inches) in this size range. Most phones in this category are fairly comfortable to use with one hand, depending on the button placement

The HTC 10's display is a mid-sized 5.2 inches. Credit: Jeremy Lips