Beware of Budget Phones!

Most of us would like to go to the nearest electronic shops and grab the best cheapest phone we can find. Well, you need to be careful with your purchases, there is a reason why they are very cheap despite the fact that they offer tones of incredible features that are not supposed to be in the phone. There is a reason for the existence of a saying which goes like…”cheap is expensive” or ”if the deal is too good then think twice”. These are tried and tested phrases that you should never ever ignore.

First of all, I would like to clear things up here, what we are talking about are smartphones and not the feature phones that have solid dial pads and tiny screens. Feature phones used to be the latest advanced tech in the early 2000s, phones like Nokia C100 and Motorola flip phones were highly sought-after tech gadgets of their time. They were incredibly reliable and robust, feature phones went for an incredibly long time without the need for recharging, they are incredibly reliable especially in remote areas where they are prone to dangers such as breakage or water hazard. Their reliability is probably the reason feature phones are still common in our electronic stores. Millions of them are always sold out every year alongside their smartphone counterparts. If you need a phone to be used for just text messaging and calling, then go for a feature phone, you are likely to use it for such a long time that you would want to throw it away when it refuses to breakdown.

As we all know it, the launching of the iPhone in 2007 by Steve Jobs was a game changer, he and his apple company managed to miniaturize the personal computers and place it into the palm of our hands, Google’s android phones followed shortly after. Even though the operating system in the phones belonged to Google, the phones were made with different brands, by 2010 and onwards Android OS was powering hundreds of millions of devices across the globe. And there went the smartphone revolution. It’s nearly two decades now since Steve Jobs’ famous launch and the world has changed so much. Personal computers are in everyone’s hands now including small children.

Even though they are an industry leader, for having been the ones who invented the industry, iPhones are exorbitantly priced. Even within the United States itself, the price tags of about a thousand dollars and above for a brand-new iPhone is way too high and out of reach for millions of Americans. The issue is magnified even further in other parts of the developing world where productivity and wages are still low. Three quarters of the world’s population are willing to spend only between One hundred and two hundred US dollars equivalent on a phone that they like very much. The average monthly salary of billions of workers across the globe is about $350 USD and below, so spending more than $250 USD on a phone is the equivalent of spending your entire month’s wages on a single phone, with almost nothing left for your bills and other daily expenses. Apple’s exorbitant pricing of its magnificent iPhones opened the doors for other phone manufacturers into the industry, right now iPhone holds a very miniature share of the smartphone market. When you travel across electronic stores around the world, you always come across smartphones priced at $100 USD or below.

The problem we have nowadays is that deceptive practices have made their way into the manufacturing and marketing of these phones. In many cases you will find that these phones have been stripped down to their bare bone and do not really have the features they display on the brochures. They could just be a skeleton of the things they claim to be. For instance, how can $100 USD Phone contain a one-hundred-megapixel camera? That is a resolution that is much higher than the bulky DSLR cameras often used by the national geographic channel to film wildlife. Those cameras are really pricy, I wanted to buy one sometime back and I was really shocked to discover that some of their costs were equal to the price of a small brand-new car. Each of those cameras I imagined that they had a resolution of less than fifty megapixels. But here we have a hundred-dollar phone claiming to contain over a hundred megapixels. I would like to believe that we are a few years away from that technology right now. You also find that the phone has 8GB of RAM as well as 500GB of internal memory. My questions always remain as, ‘’where would you get such valuable microchips at such a low price?’’ Even computers with a fraction of the hardware specs of such a phone do not cost that cheap. It’s such an absurdity. This kind of purchase even though it looks like a smart decision at the beginning is prone to run into serious problems months or years down the line. Below is a list of the issue you may run into when going for a budget phone.

Slow Phones or Hanging too frequently

You may face frequent issues of phones hanging when you are using the phone. There could also be cases of the phone restarting itself without you touching any button. This can be so frustrating especially when you are in the middle of a serious conversation with someone on the other side and the phone suddenly shuts itself off. This type of distraction caused by the phone’s erratic behavior ends up ruining the conversation because you have to start all over again after an interruption by a phone’s shutdown. This is such a very serious matter as it can ruin someone’s career prospects especially if you are using it for official purposes. Imagine you are in the middle of an important phone call with potential employer or customer when your phone goes off. Once you switch it back on, you find out that the phone keeps hanging and the apps taking many minutes to load. Your WhatsApp chat gets derailed and you may end up losing a potential client if you are using the app for business. You had been told that the phone had a whooping 8GB RAM which makes it way faster than most office computers in many organizations across the globe. This is more than enough memory to run multiple apps at the same time without having any lag issues. The very fact that it has high specs written on the brochure while at the same time becoming so problematic is a reason to believe that something more sinister is happening behind the scenes. If you take it to an expert to properly examine it you may hear a different story that you may not like.

As I have heard it from other tech experts, some shady manufacturers sometimes placed into the device poor quality hardware specs such as early generation microchips, they then boost the memory with the help of an advanced software to make up for the memory size. The inflated memory chip then fools the OS into thinking that a 2GB RAM is now 8GB. In reality the installed chip could have a maximum memory of 1GB or even less. So, you go about running multiple apps on your device thinking it’s all safe without knowing that something may go wrong in the background. A while back, Apple was accused of deliberately slowing down their iPhone devices so that their users are forced to buy brand new ones. Many users said that their phones became slower and slower with every new software update therefore forcing them to get themselves latest brand-new iPhones. The magnificent Apple company on the other hand denied such claims and the accusers on the other hand never produced a single shred of evidence to support their claim. But that’s a story for another day.

Constant breakdowns

If you buy a cheap smartphone, you need to put aside some money to be used for constant repairs and upgrades. As we had said earlier that cheap is expensive, you will pay dearly later on when the phone starts being a nuisance, you will end up repairing the mouthpiece, the battery, the screen, the OS and, multiple other features inside that will drive you crazy. I don’t remember how many times I had to repair a cheap smartphone that I bought from the streets. It constantly broke down and I churned out bundles of notes hoping that it would be excellent the next time I repaired it. After a year of using it, I sat down, removed by calculator from the drawer and did some math. I summed up all the money I spent on repairing the device and it added to a price of two brand new phones of the same brand I have been repairing. This was a shocking revelation as I had never imagined spending significant chunk of my monthly wages on a phone that won’t stop breaking down. I learnt the hard way, and will never repeat that mistake again. I strongly advice every person that buys a cheap smartphone that if something inside that phone gets damaged rendering it unusable, they should not try to repair for it will cost them dearly, every time you repair the phone it becomes worse and worse. Making it more unreliable, they should instead throw it away and get another cheap brand new one if they want to save themselves pain and heartbreak.

Dangers to the user

Cheap smartphones are full of hidden dangers to the users. The fact that they are extremely cheap for their class means safety and security were compromised to lower the price. There are countless cases of cheap smartphones blowing up in the hands of the user. Either while charging or having a telephone conversation. It’s such a sad scenario that innocent people were seriously injured by explosive materials from these devices. I truly feel sorry for them and their families. Cracked phone screens have been known to cause serious cuts to its users that could not afford to throw them away.

You may find your phone failing constantly for unexplained reasons, this happens time and again, microchips from used phones sometimes ended up being used in brand new phones, the reason your brand-new smartphone is so cheap is that it contains electronic hardware from used phones. When phones die, their owners throw them away where they end up in an electronic waste junkyard. Some recycling companies have specialized in salvaging components of phones from completely dead phones to be reused, the problem here being that even though the phone has been used for such a long time and most of its components completely worn out, microchips are plucked off, cleaned and reinstalled into brand new devices even though they still possess the defects that caused the phone to be thrown away in the first place. All these amazing stuffs you are receiving are just recycled materials. There is little to no production whereby an entirely brand-new motherboard had to be manufactured from scratch and with the use of brand-new components. So, when you buy a budget phone that starts to flicker, hang or repeatedly shuts down just a few weeks after buying it, then you should know that it may contain some elements of used phones. The world of electronics manufacturing is so diverse and so shady that it is becoming more difficult to tell who is supplying what, they just end up on our consumer shelves and consumers rush for them like hot cakes. People just want the best cheapest and that is where the problem lies. They all want the cheapest and throw away quality assurance out of the window. ‘’It doesn’t have to be the best quality brand in the market, it just needs to work,” they say.

Personal Information Security issues

The fact that budget phones are made of poor components and often breakdown isn’t enough. I assume when you were buying your phone you were planning to use it to login into your favorite social media sites. since the manufacturing process was also rushed, little consideration was put into the cyber security aspects of the software installed. You always find your social media accounts being hacked into all the time.

I don’t remember how many times I had to change the password of my social media accounts after being hacked into several times in a month. That hacking plague went away only after I threw away the phone and bought a brand-new quality one. It was a bit pricy but worth the sacrifice. If you have a budget phone then you should only use it for calling and texts, every other app you are logging into is potentially dangerous.

When Steve Jobs invented the iPhone in the early 2000s he knew very well that smart phones are going to be a part and parcel of our daily lives, it’s the reason why iPhones are the safest and most secure smartphones in the world today, they got it right from day one.

Intrusive apps

Users all over the world have been giving complaints about apps on their phones that quietly installed themselves in the background only to be surprised the following morning when they woke up to find their phones full of apps and games that they didn’t install themselves. When they try to uninstall them, they fail miserably, the uninstall button is missing on those apps. So, they just have to put up with them anyway. The most disturbing thing is that there is no way of determining what exactly the app is doing on your phone, how much information it takes and how dangerous it can be you your personal information.

Ok I am talking about Android devices here, for those of us that love our android devices we need to be a little bit cautious. When you search on the Google Playstore for those same intrusive apps you find no presence of them there, so where did these apps come from and how did they manage to install themselves on your device without your consent? A lot of experts warn that when you see any kind of strange behavior in your smartphone, then it could be a malware that has taken over your phone, it installs itself so secretively, causes as little damage to your phone as possible and then cleverly masks itself to look like a harmless health or fitness app or a cool game. You have apps labeled on your phone as games, but don’t actually work, so what are they doing there? You click on them to load them up so as to see what is inside but nothing happens, you can’t use them and can’t remove them either, they just sit there seemingly doing nothing but, in the background, they are working day and night harvesting your data and transporting it to wherever place the creator of the malware is. Other tech experts argue that this could be a deliberate act by the manufacturer to leave a backdoor into the Operating System so that they can secretly install spy apps that will be closely watching everything you do with that phone. Yes, everything including banking.

I have come to learn the hard way that it is not a smart idea to bank online using a phone especially a cheap one. Installing banking apps on budget phones is asking to be robbed by hackers of the dark web, the features are so poor and security of these phones so weak that you are better off using an outdated version of windows desktop than a brand-new smartphone. Since successful hacking into two of my banking apps I have never used budget phones to login into my bank accounts, I always go for a laptop computer or desktop PC. Windows and MAC computers have much safer security features than phones, so if you don’t have to do it, please don’t bank online using cheap budget phones. You shall come to bear me witness that I had warned you but failed to listen, and had to learn the hard way through pain and heartbreak. When your bank accounts get swept clean by a hacker then will you learn to be truly cautious.

Nothing is really cheap in this world. If you find a phone that is too cheap for its features and tech specs then you need to think twice. When the deal is too good you should always take a step back and hold your breath for a moment. Give yourself time to internalize what exactly is happening and you shall never be sorry for anything, you shall be glad that you always take precautions in your techno undertakings. You may think you got a good deal at the beginning but eventually you are going to pay dearly in the long run. You shall pay a heavy price indeed, I tell you, my friend. Nothing is cheap in this world. It may be cheap for a reason that you may not like.

Let’s say for instance you come across a Hummer being sold on the streets for two thousand dollars. I mean a brand new one. You know very well that Hummers are for the elites of the society, used ones cost hundreds of thousands of dollars let alone a brand new one. But the sight of coming across a sparkling clean brand-new automobile being sold across the streets raises a lot of eyebrows. You may wonder if it is really a car or a carton box that looks like a car. If you manage to get inside and test the vehicle yourself, with the engines, mirrors, breaks and everything else working fine, you may wonder if the person selling the vehicle is the actual owner who has the legal right to sell it. There are so many questions running in your mind, this is how it should be when you are going to get yourself a budget phone, they are questions you cannot afford to ignore. Let’s say for instance you come across a brand-new residential tower in the middle of Manhattan with a two-bedroom apartment renting out for two hundred dollars a month. Even though the building exterior and interiors may look sparkling clean, people will instantly know that something is not right about the building, it’s either been poorly built, possess a health hazard to the occupants or something else shady is going on. Coming across a two hundred dollar a month residential rental property in the middle of Manhattan downtown is a scenario so strange, it’s like finding a lake in the middle of the desert. You may think it’s a mirage. Or your mind playing tricks on you, people lose their sense and hallucinate in the heat of deserts. Even if you get closer to find the actual lake is full of water, you will still doubt if the pool’s water is actual clean enough to be used for drinking. So many thoughts, doubts and fears cross your mind before you make that fateful decision of dipping your head into the water and drinking from the fountain.

A rental property that is too cheap for its neighborhood always raises eyebrows. It could be dangerous to live in there. You may save a lot in terms of rent but may pay dearly in medical bills and living in it may adversely affect your health.

Cheap is expensive as the old adage goes

If you notice that there are apps that stubbornly installing themselves on your device yet you can’t uninstall or delete them, you should stop using the phone for sensitive purposes such as logging into your online platforms, they could be recording everything you are keying into the touchpad, you may be unknowingly giving away your personal information to unknown people.

Know Your Brands.

It is a good idea that people should stick to excellent quality brands, if they care about their privacy and security. It’s better to get phones from a brand you know and trust than picking items from the streets with such little consideration.

Here is a list of my favorite phone brands out there in the market. am pretty sure you have heard about a lot of them already. Let me give you my own honest gauge of what I think are among the best out in the market…

My Best Phone Brands

1.iPhone

It reminds us once again that Steve Jobs’ name will remain as one of the best out there in the Tech world for many decades to come. he had it all figured out right from the start. The Phone was extremely powerful compared to anything else in its market range, the sleek design made it extremely beautiful. the operating system was user friendly and full of mind-blowing new features. it was water proof and crushproof thus guaranteeing durability. and the security features are like no other brand in the world. apple went to lengths to make sure that people who try to steal or snatch your phone from your hands never get a chance to use it. iPhone’s security features have been rock solid right from the beginning, and this is what makes it the number one quality brand in the world. no other phone brand will ever overthrow or even come close to the iPhone. It was, it still is and will always be my number one pick phone when I go shopping for phones. If your pockets permit you, then please go for an iPhone. It will save you a lot of pain and heartache brought about by budget phones.

2.SAMSUNG

Samsung has come a long way in the manufacturing sector, for those that have gone through the company’s history, we all know that they specialized in other electronics fields long before they tried their luck in the smartphone market. They carefully aimed their darts and miraculously hit the bull’s eye, in the emergence of android as an alternative phone operating system to iPhones’ iOS, Samsung quickly became the number one choice for those that wanted to try a smartphone but were not within the budget to get themselves an iPhone, in the last decade and a half, Samsung produced extremely powerful and reliable phones that were rivalled only by iPhones. A lot of people already had a couple of Samsung branded electronic gadgets in their homes already, this really helped Samsung in marketing their phones because millions of people around the world were already aware of how the company produced excellent quality products, based on the durable Samsung products they were already using in their homes.

My first android phone was a Samsung, it was a very pretty and powerful device which served me for many years, I still use it now, even after nearly a decade of extensive use. It’s still working perfectly, though it has slowed down a little bit, I cannot call it dead or anything of that sort. Though a small issue about the company came up a couple of years ago when the phone batteries started to expand and bulge, after long periods of disuse. I had a Samsung Galaxy S brand that had sat in my drawer for a period of many months, when I went to check on it, I found the battery was very much swollen which cracked open the back casing. This issue was brought to the attention of the company, and I believe they have sorted out the issue right now, there were other issues that emerged at the company back then like batteries blowing up in the hands of the users, and some users unfortunately losing their lives to this unfortunate incident. Despite all these drawbacks Samsung is still one of the best phone brands in the whole world. You better give it a try.

3.ASUS

This is a brand that came out of the blue and took the market by storm. This is a company that had some experience in the manufacture of PC hardware for a long time, I was using an ASUS laptop for years before I tried out their smartphone gadgets. These guys produce excellent products worth your budget. Even though a lot of people want an all-in-one phones where there is a balance between sleek design, durability and high performance, ASUS prioritizes high performance over all the other features of the phone, I have had ASUS gadgets that are way more powerful than a lot of personal computers of today. This is a company worth a try, they have a favorable product warranty and their customer support is quite good.

4.NOKIA

Oh! Wait a minute! Please hold on! I know what you are about to say, you want to say that this company died a long time ago and should not be on the list. Well, you see, that’s not how I see things in my tech surroundings, Nokia may have been already long gone and buried in the graveyard for a long time in the eyes of many people, but that is not me, that is not how I see things, Nokia as a company is still valuable to me. A lot of people blame the company for not capturing the smartphone boom effectively enough, even though they had been the best phone manufacturer in the world for decades, their lack of innovation and slow responses to changes in the tech-world caused them to lose a lot of market share, a blunder that sent the company to a never-ending downward spiral in which they a struggling to emerge from now. But right now, they are making moves in the right direction. Nokia is producing quality phones that are running on android OS. A while back they had tried windows as an operating system but their brilliant plan unfortunately flopped when the windows OS failed to capture the anticipated market share, the failure of windows phone is a whole story for another day, let’s just say that NOKIA tried their lack with Microsoft and failed miserably, right now I think the company is doing great. Their phones have excellent security features with standard performance. Their phones have no issue like catastrophic failures or intrusive apps. I have a handful of Nokia phones which are doing just fine right now.

IF you have other favorite phone brands in your collection, please let me know about them in the comments section at the bottom of this page…

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