A Guide To The Best Smartphones Available For You & Your Business
With so many available, choosing the right smartphone for your business can be a difficult task. Here we present a guide to five of the best business smartphones on the market.
We’ve come a long way from the ‘traditional’ office. Work is no longer limited to your desk and your landline. Now your business moves stride-by-stride alongside you. And the trusty smartphone can be absolutely key to your success, allowing you to access the working world from your very own, portable business hub.
The ‘Big Boys’
Look around any conference room or commuter train and you’ll see the same thing – Apple and Samsung smartphones aplenty. However, not only are these phones the markets ‘big hitters’ in terms of brand appeal and popularity, but the latest models of both provide big screens perfect for your business needs. The iPhone 6 Plus improves on several features of its previous incarnations. Not only does it now boast a five and a half inch, retina HD display screen, it has also largely managed to address battery problems of older generations, meaning your iPhone is far less likely to cut out in the middle of composing an important email, or during an important presentation.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 slightly outperforms the iPhone in terms of screen size (5.7 inches) and resolution (a crystal clear 2560×1440), and perhaps owes more in its design to the traditional tablet than the typical mobile phone. However, this is certainly not to its detriment, with a super useful stylus included to assist with the more fiddly parts of running your business on the go, a hefty processor and a similarly well-stocked app store to its iTunes equivalent. Whichever of these phones you choose, you and your colleagues will be able to customise the perfect smartphone setup for your particular business. Both handsets have been widely praised by critics, and manage to skillfully perform the basics you’d expect of any business phone, along with the additional flair we’ve come to expect of these brands.
What Are The Alternatives
Whilst great phones, both the Apple and Samsung smartphones are expensive. Therefore, sensibly, competitors have seen the necessity to offer the same hi-tech features at a much lower price. The Nokia Lumia 830 is the perfect example of this. With the handset available for almost half the price of an iPhone 6 Plus, your business no longer has to pay a premium to remain at the very forefront of mobile technology. Particularly when you consider the Lumia contains a Windows 8.1 operating system, allowing you to access your Office programmes at your convenience. And although the screen is slightly smaller at five inches, as well as having a less crisp camera than other Lumias and slightly less processing oomph than rival models, these shouldn’t interfere with anything business-related you would require of your phone, making it a serious alternative to the above models.
HTC’s latest One M8 for Windows has a lot in common with the Lumia. It too uses a Windows operating system, has a similarly sized full HD screen, and is also cheaper than its Samsung and Apple counterparts (although pricier than the Lumia at just over £400 for the handset). Still, for crunching spreadsheets or tweaking a business presentation amidst the comforts of the central line, the HTC is more than handy.
Finally, it almost seems wrong to discuss the best business smartphones without mentioning the brand who created the original, modern business must-have – Blackberry. And the new, and much squarer than before, Blackberry Passport is their latest assault on the smartphone market. As is quintessential Blackberry, the qwerty keyboard is perfect for businessmen who take joy in the satisfying ‘tapping out’ of a lengthy email, or are fed up of not being able to type in gloves when the winter comes. The phone also contains a lengthy battery life which can last for a few days on end, and an ‘adaptive antenna’, perfect for regular business calls thanks to its ability to alter its signals around the immediate environment. The screen is considerably smaller at four and a half inches, but what’s wrong with something more compact? It’ll certainly look smart in the inside of your suit pocket.
So What’s Best?
As you’d probably expect, the more you pay for the phone, the more of an ‘all-rounder’ you’re likely to get, with the iPhones and Samsungs perfect for business and personal use. However, it really depends on the needs of your business, and all five phones above offer something different at varying budgets. Besides, sometimes you don’t need that fancy camera. You just want a reliable phone to keep you in touch with the business world, with the occasional bell or whistle attached. Whatever you need, they’re all available.
