The practical guide to choosing a smartphone

Buying a smartphone can be daunting, particularly when there are so many new options on the market. Choosing the right phone is an intensely personal decision, and one answer may not fit all – even for those who aren’t obsessed with the minute differences in technical specifications.

No matter who you are, the first thing to figure out is what feature is your top priority. While we’d all love for phones to have it all, the right decision requires you to rank some attributes. Based on the questions I often field about new phones, here are four common ways that you can frame your smartphone searches.

The camera

Cameras have become a top priority for many smartphone buyers. Thinking about what kind of pictures you shoot and your own skill level may help you here. The good news is that most of the phones on the market have pretty good cameras, so it’s hard to land with a bad option.

If you’re mostly a point-andshoot person, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and Apple’s iPhone 8 will work for you. But they do lack some photo features available on more premium models.

If you often have trouble focusing on the right part of a picture with scenic views, for example, you may want to think about the Note 8. That phone allows you to adjust focus of a picture after you’ve taken. It also always records a wide-angle picture with your close-up. That’s nice for those of us who aren’t always getting the perfect shot.

Tend to shake a lot when you’re taking pictures? Go for a phone with a feature called image stabilization, which helps when shooting from a moving location (like a car) or for zoomed-in shots. The Note 8 has made this a selling point. Apple has stabilization in both of the iPhone X’s cameras, and in the telephoto lens of the iPhone 8 Plus.

If you take a lot of pictures of people, the iPhone might be the better option for you. The iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus have expanded on Apple’s popular “Portrait Mode” settings, which allow you to shoot dramatically lit shots of people.

LG’s new V30 also has an impressive rear-facing wide-angle lens, which may have particular appeal to those who are always snapping vistas. The trade-off there is that the front-facing camera isn’t as good, so your selfies won’t be as good.

If selfies are totally your thing, the iPhone X promises excellent selfies, thanks to the fancy tech that also powers facial recognition in the front-facing camera.

The battery life

Battery life is a good attribute to consider, particularly if you’re on the go a lot and can’t stay plugged in throughout the day.

Phone makers – Apple, in particular – aren’t giving specific hour estimates on battery life any more, perhaps because mileage varies so much depending on how you use your phone. When I’m testing phones, I’m mostly looking for a practical standard: to see if they get me through a full day without requiring a top-up.

While the most expensive phones tend to have the best battery life, it’s not necessarily the case this year. The Galaxy Note 8, Samsung’s most expensive phone, doesn’t have much better battery life than the S8+, for example.

For Apple, the iPhone X boasts the most battery life, explicitly promising two hours of extra battery life over the iPhone 7 – an extrapolation you could extend, presumably, to the iPhone 8.

But stats can be a little deceiving. The iPhone 7 wasn’t the best for battery life in the Apple lineup; the iPhone 7 Plus was. If battery life is your main focus, then,

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