The Alcatel Flash Plus, ASUS Zenfone 2 ZE500CL, and Lenovo A7000 have set the benchmarks on what an affordable smartphone should be. They all sport competitive specs and features with a price tag ranging between Php6k to Php8K. These gave consumers an idea of what a bang-for-the buck phone is and have frowned upon those that have the following specs especially if they’re more expensive.
- Outdated dual-Core CPU. There was a time when we considered smartphones with dual-core processors as high-end, but since consumers do more now than just call or text, and Android OS needs better hardware to keep up with features, we’re now looking at newer Intel dual-core and MediaTek quad-core CPUs at the minimum.
- 1GB RAM. The bigger the number the better. That’s not always the case if we’re talking about CPU cores but when it comes to RAM, that statement is true, especially if you’re on Android and heavy on games. Right now we’re looking at 2GB RAM as the sweet spot set by the three phones mentioned earlier. With how people are using their phones right now, 1GB is not always enough.
- 2,000mAh battery and below. If smartphone brands want to be hated for releasing a phone in the mentioned price range, putting a below average battery is the surest way to go. What’s the point of releasing a smartphone with all those features if users can only use it for half a day. Pack it with at least 2,500mAh and we’ll call it decent.
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Sub-HD resolution with poor display. Going back to the standards for the mentioned price range, we hate when a phone that packs a very low resolution and stretch it on a screen of 5-inches. In addition, phones are used for viewing photos and videos so brands should at least give it a display that can produce good colors and viewing angles.
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Small, non-expandable storage. Considering that the system files take a significant chunk of your internal storage, having a small storage capacity is a huge disadvantage especially if you want to install a lot of apps. That being said, 8GB can now be considered as below average. 16GB is average and acceptable but should have support for microSD.
How about you guys? Tell us what other specs you don’t like to see in a phone if it costs Php7k to Php8K.
No LTE?