The present-day business world is incredibly fast-paced and relentless. That means that the traditional days of doing your job from the office are long gone. If you want to remain relevant in this new era, you need to be ready to compete 24/7 and do as many of the pending tasks on the go as possible. That puts quite a lot of pressure on your phone to deliver the performance necessary for attaining optimal productivity.
So, which phone should have the honor of becoming your daily driver? Well, it really depends on your personal preferences and what you are going to use the most. Let us take a look at a couple of considerations that will help you narrow down the search.
Research the business requirements
This is one of the most important considerations you will need to make so feel free to start with this one. Essentially, every company presents you with a list of duties you need to perform in your position. Even if you get the best smartphone in the world, its overall performance will remain compromised if the device is not suitable for tackling these specific tasks. The things you need to take into the most serious consideration are security, durability, productivity capabilities, app ecosystem, camera, and battery life.
Security options
In this day and age when cybercrime experiences massive growth and loss of vital data can practically destroy one brand, it is easy to see why every company needs an IT department to take care of these issues. However, even the most experienced teams can’t micromanage all smartphones that, at this point, make some of the most sensitive data breach points. If you need to handle such sensitive data, some of the specialized hack-resistant brands like Bittium or Sirin Labs might just be the picks you need.
Connectivity and docking options
When we are talking about connectivity we don’t necessarily mean network or Bluetooth type although it is worth mentioning that, in the business sector 5G support and Bluetooth 5.2 will very soon become baseline specs. In this day and age, a growing number of smartphone brands are equipping their devices with desktop mode (see Motorola’s ‘Ready For’) that allows you to turn your phone into a pocket-sized PC and multitask in a genuine desktop environment. Features like this can have a great impact on your productivity.
Performance and ease of use
In this case, it really boils down to your priorities. Apple’s lineup offers very air-tight and streamlined performance while the Android smartphones (brands like Samsung) present users with way more customization options, albeit with a couple of hiccups. Out of the two, we instinctively lean more toward Apple. The band has a long history of consistency and security, and even if you buy Apple iPhones at digiDirect or some other online store, the devices will be ready for top-tier performance out of the box.
TCO and device continuity
Some cheaper smartphone brands tend to look very lucrative on paper. However, it is only when you take into consideration the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) that you realize that finding peripherals and maintaining these units tends to be very taxing. Also, the more reliable brands traditionally have strong device continuity and make switching the units and peripherals much simpler. These issues may seem menial, but companies poised for rapid growth need to have a very consistent infrastructure.
Battery life
Even though we have briefly mentioned this requirement in the previous sections, we would like to give it a bit more room here since, no matter what you do and where you currently are, battery life will only make your life easier. With that in mind, any device that can provide you with 12-15 hours of uninterrupted heavy use, graphically intense apps, multimedia consumption, casual gaming, and data use is a perfect pick for you. Numbers like these are usually brought by a 6,000+ mAh battery and an efficient chipset.
Customer support and repair services
Last but not least, we would like to quickly cover another important issue and that is customer support. Unfortunately, this is the area where a lot of Asian manufacturers like OnePlus take a huge hit. All these brands, of course, will be more than willing to offer their services and repair/replace your devices as soon as possible. Unfortunately, a lot of them lack the infrastructure to do this in a truly timely manner. So, before you make any decisions do a quick research about local availability and customer support centers.
Final comments
So, there you have it – the top seven things you need to consider in order to find the best business phone for all challenges that might be waiting for you down the road. These days, we live our lives on the go, and it is only expected for the business world to follow in these footsteps. In order to keep up with this relentless pace, your phone needs to offer truly stellar business-oriented specs. These few considerations should do a great job of narrowing the search down for you.