Factors to Consider when Buying a Mobile Phone in Ghana

by Lawrence Quarshie | May 31, 2024

Mobile phones have become integral part of our lives and the invention of smartphones have added to the functions a phone can perform. Generally a feature phone will cost you a few cedis to maximum hundred of cedis. However, smartphone prices are between hundreds of Ghana cedis to several thousands of cedis. As such one must take into consideration a number of factors before buying or replacing a mobile phone or smartphone. In this article we will help you make an informed decision on your next purchase. Without wasting much time, let's look at some factors to consider when buying a mobile phone:

One most important thing phone buyers check most when buying a phone is the phones battery. People normally check the battery capacity to see how much power it can store when fully charged, how fast it charges, how fast it drains and how long the battery lasts. In order to get value for your money in terms of batteries capacity, first check the general battery capacity. Battery capacities comes in the forms of "XXXX mAh". The higher the number, the higher the capacity and the longer the battery lasts after a single charge. Again on the day of purchase, one can ask for a quick charge with the store, if purchase is done offline or brick and mortar store. This will give you a far idea of the batteries charge cycles. Again manufacturers like Apple also include battery health to give users information on the battery's strength. The battery health feature tells the user how much of its original capacity is left. For instance a battery of 100% health will take much time to drain that one at 80%.

With the advent of smartphones, people have included camera performance as one the criterias for selecting a mobile device. Gone are the days when phones were only used to make and receive calls, and text messages. But now highly sophisticated devices comes with cameras, with which some of them are even rocking shoulders with custom made digital cameras. Mostly phones with high pixel cameras are able to take high quality images are high resolutions. One can also consider whether the main camera has auxiliary cameras to improve upon the overall image/video created. For instance, bokeh (blurring of background of images/video) are mostly present in phones with more than one (1) camera.

One most important thing to also consider when buying a phone is the memory. Modern day phones comes with two (2) different kinds of memory: the Random Access Memory (RAM) and the Read Only Memory (ROM). The RAM is the space available for holding information and instructions during processing. For instance, assuming you a performing a task on your device that requires 3GB of memory but you device is a 1GB RAM device. With this, the device with initially process 1GB of the data and move on the 2nd 1GB till it gets to the last (though the whole concept has been simplified for easy understanding). Meaning a phone with higher RAM will generally be faster as it can process things and give out results within a short time as compared to the device with a lower RAM.

With the Read Only Memory (ROM), it is basically the storage space of the device. It is the space on the phone for holding files. This means the bigger the ROM, the bigger the space left for holding/storing files. Conclusively, we can say a phone with a larger RAM is equally better.

However, these two features comes at a price. As such one needs to consider what he/she may be using the phone for and see whether he/she is going for a faster device or a device with a larger storage capacity. A device that gives you a bigger RAM and ROM normally comes at a higher price but will be able to meet the ever increasing demand of files (in terms of size) and apps (in terms of processing complexities) as compared to a device with smaller RAM and ROM.