My Starmobile Diamond – Part 1

It took me more than five years to buy a new mobile phone. I’m pretty good with my Motorola L72. It’s still functioning and sturdy. It was quite a benchmark phone during its release. Until now, it’s my benchmark for reliability and stability. Of course, the RAZR was a better phone but I can’t afford it that time.
 
 Smart phones have invaded the market in the recent technological history. These are devices that merged the functionality of mobile phones and PDAs. I wanted one before but I was too picky, the cost of acquiring one is beyond my financial capability or I wasn’t really convinced yet that I needed one.
 
 When I started considering buying my own smart phone early last year, I made some guiding principles for my purchase. Of course, my benchmark is still my L72. So here’s my guide:

-          First, my budget is only P10,000 and if I will go for P15,000 gadget it should be a superb phone that I won’t be changing for a couple of years. I usually buy my gadgets cash. But most stores and brands nowadays don’t give discounts even for cash purchases. Since I have my credit card, I would want to purchase my phone in an installment basis and with 0% interest. With that, I could gain points for my card.

-          With the technological advancement today, I decided to go for a phablet. 9” tablets are heavy and mostly are not phone capable. 7” is still big. 4” smart phones are quite small if I intend to use Adobe Reader and office apps. A 5” phablet is just right for me.

-          It has to be a solid device. I don’t like the feeling the I’m holding a plastic device that would seem to break or crush if you put excessive pressure on it.

-          It has to have a strong, scratch resistant display. My L72 is still without scratch even though it’s not a Corning Gorilla glass. Those that have the Gorilla are quite expensive. But then Asahi released the DragonTrail glass.

-          I would like to have one that has AMOLED screen but as long as I won’t have difficulty reading messages in my phone in dark and especially in very bright outdoor light.

-          It has to have the latest operating system. Today it’s the Android 4.1.1 Jellybean.

-          Since I’m a photographer, I would like to have phone camera that has a wide aperture for low light situations and has a minimum of 8 megapixels.

-          It has to have a minimum of 1Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM.

-          It can have an expandable memory slot.

-          Connectivity via Bluetooth, USB or Wi-Fi.

-          Freebies, of course.

With that I will discuss why I opted to buy Starmobile Diamond in my next post.