The phone specs you should be looking at when shopping around.
With this knowledge comes the ability to not get ripped off!
With the blog launching, another seismic event also happened to follow it, the 2026 World Cup ⚽. Football might finally be coming home and alongside it some savings for your pocket with this blog!
Who is this post for?
This post is focused on lower cost and slightly older phones and how exactly to identify if a phone is actually good or not so if you're looking to save and get more for your money (as all Dads do) this is for you. This post will focus on some key specs to look out for to make sure you don't waste your money buying a crap phone, nobody wants that. I will be following up with a post on the same topic but for tablets followed by a post on where and how to shop around to find good deals.
So this is for you if are needing to buy yourself a good cost effective phone or a phone for your teenage kid or younger sibling or any relative who is a standard user, by that I mean they are your typical casual users i.e. use a phone for your usual shopping apps, WhatsApp, YouTube, standard photos and games etc and that they aren't specialist or power users needing a phone to do some high level photography or for super heavy usage.
This post might not be for you if you’re a tech whizz who knows all this and more or if your teenage kid wants you to buy them the latest iPhone Pro Max… Good luck with that one! Although I will do a later post on the Xiaomi Poco X8 Pro Max which essentially is a ~£300 phone that punches well above it's weight and competes with the latest top flagship phones.
Let's get started
First things first where do you find the specs for phones? Is there an information source that breaks it all down and lets you compare? Yes my friends there is one - GSMArena.com this is the website I have been using for over a decade and has every little spec detailed, very helpful. Secondly with AI advancing, LLMs like Google Gemini or ChatGPT can help you to get quick answers and comparisons too so feel free to use that to help e.g. you can ask is ‘X’ processor on this phone as good as ‘Y’ processor or is ‘X’ phone better than ‘Y’ phone that I will list below. If you can understand the specs it will help you figure out what phone is good and what phone to avoid to get more for your money.
What Specs to look out for? Here are my basic benchmarks, anything above this is better.
RAM memory - this is like a phones brain capacity to multitask. (As a father I feel like I need a RAM memory upgrade - the tasks never stop!)
It should be a minimum of 6gb to operate multiple apps smoothly. Anything less and the phone will struggle, an example is the redmi note 10 I once tried had a 3gb RAM and whenever you loaded up a few apps it would go so slow and crash, ironically the previous version redmi note 9 had 4gb RAM and was a lot smoother, talk about a downgrade!
Android version if shopping for an android phone - minimum version should be Android 12.
Processor - the engine that completes the tasks. All phones and should have an octa-core processor (pretty much all of them do now), but you definitely should NOT be using a phone that operates on a quad core processor.
Chipset - for simplicity I will focus on 2 popular android chipsets, the Snapdragon and MediaTek Dimensity processors. If you're inclined to go for a google pixel go for G2 or above. If you're an iPhone user A15 or above should do you good.
Snapdragon
For Snapdragon - the 765G - 5G was an early midrange chipset from around 2021 that included 5G compatibility so this should be your baseline minimum. It will still perform solidly today for your typical use case.
Device example - Oppo X3 Lite and Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
If you're going for the higher range chipsets then the lowest one you'd want is the Snapdragon - 865 - 5G again the first higher range with 5G compatibility and came out around 2021. It will still perform very smoothly today.
Device examples - Oppo X3 Neo and Samsung galaxy S20 FE
MediaTek Dimensity Chipsets*
Mid range that has 5G compatibility:
Dimensity 900 - example Oppo X5 Lite
Higher range which will inevitably have 5G compatibility
Dimensity 1200 - example OnePlus Nord 2 and Xiaomi 11T
*The ones listed above are chipsets from around 2021, MediaTek from 2023 changed how they name their newer chipsets which can sound confusing but to simplify it, anything that is in the 7000 series or above is typically good enough e.g. Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro 5G has a dimensity 7300 ultra processor, their most premium processors is the 9000 series.
Internal storage memory - if it's for a very simple user who won't be taking lots of photos 64gb could suffice but I think 128gb should be the minimum memory you look for unless the phone has a memory card slot.
Battery - 4000MaH should be the minimum for android.
Camera - This one is subjective as higher megapixels doesn't necessarily mean better quality images, phone cameras also have multiple cameras. Most phones have decent enough cameras now for ordinary photography which you can edit and enhance if needed on photo editor apps. On GSMArena they have reviews for most phones where you can look at camera quality. If camera quality and photography is an absolute top priority then I will say the Pixel 7 should be a benchmark as the quality of its camera is pretty good. I'd ask Google Gemini a question like Is ‘X phone’ camera as good as the Pixel 7’s? That will give you an answer or a starting point to research.
You may stop here now and go do some research with this new knowledge you now have. Any questions or comments or if you just want to criticise what I wrote, feel free to post below!
Otherwise my final thoughts below if you care to know:
I appreciate some of you might be thinking this is too much to figure out but I think it's worthwhile given you will buying a phone multiple times in your life and especially if you're a dad, you will be buying more than one. Getting clued up will increase your purchasing power and save you money. Phones are more reliable these days too so it's not usually a case you buy a used phone and suddenly it dies a few months later. I will also caveat this and say when I say used phones I don't mean ones scratched up in bad condition, I mean ones that are still in good condition and there are plenty out there.
For the average casual user phones haven't changed a lot in terms of new features that make a big difference, I mean aside from the folding screens but they still don't add much dad practicality for me, they are heavier and more fragile, I'd be worried if my kid grabbed that off me especially considering how much they cost.
For me it has mainly been refined improvements that's been happening over the years, things like the camera, processors and screen quality have advanced and become more optimised which is useful but it’s all predictable and hardly groundbreaking. Some useful physical things have been removed in newer phones if anything such as removable batteries, 3.5mm headphone jack and memory card slots to expand storage. Maybe bringing back removable or swappable batteries could be a new feature again on these phones? Or some of those advanced health monitoring features you can get on smartwatches could be embedded but perhaps that's a bit too much as phones are very powerful tools now we all rely on heavily, having some separation might actually be a good thing although I would like to see some style variation return. Around 2010 you’d have slide phones, flip phones, walkman phones and phones with keyboards! Styles would be different and each year you'd actually look forward to something new and different.
Back to today the flagships and even mid range phones from up to 3-5 years ago will still perform very well today (and for years to come) and those can be snapped up for good prices in the £100-250 price range; good value for your money.
The marketing and ads today makes you believe they will be inadequate but I guess it’s no surprise that's how they make sales. I think the new phones are very overpowered for the casual user. Does your teenage kid really need a £1200 iPhone 17 pro max to see their acne clearly on the selfie camera or to mask it with the beautify feature? Older phones can do that at a fraction of the price!