We asked, you told us: Personal preference influences you the most when buying phones

At times, it seems like smartphone manufacturers are releasing new handsets every other day. While new hardware isn’t actually released that frequently, there are countless phones in every price and spec bracket for you to choose from when picking “the best smartphone” for yourself.

In addition to most people having a favorite brand, many rely on tech reviews done by sites like Android Authority, recommendations from friends, comparisons, and price points.

So this week, we decided to ask you what is the most influencing factor when buying yourself a new smartphone. Here are the results.

What influences you the most when picking “the best smartphone”?

Results

As you can see, a majority of the voters across the board felt that personal preference of the smartphone manufacturer influences their buying choices most. This outcome isn’t all that surprising as most people these days have owned a smartphone or two and have formed an attachment to the features and brands that they like.

The second most popular choice was basing their purchases on performance comparisons and tests. As most modern phones rank pretty similarly in the specs department, you want to make sure that you’re choosing the device that lasts the longest and outperforms the competition.

Read next: Best of Android 2018: the smartphone of the year is…

Lastly, coming in third on the website and on Twitter was the consensus of tech reviews. Reading and watching early hands-on content is essential so that buyers can determine if the device is worth the money.

Noteworthy comments

Here are some of the best comments from last week’s poll explaining why they voted the way that they did:

• Best price for best specs
• Quick and regular updates. Especially bug fixes, security patches and new features.
• Battery life, battery life, and battery life.
• As long as it’s not Samsung, mid-range with decent performance specs, OLED…meh, as long as it’s comparable to OnePlus, if not the phone itself .

Of course, there are those looking for specific specs before spending their hard-earned cash:

• 3.5mm headphone jack, expandable storage (if onboard storage is less than 128Gb), Oled screen, good battery, good camera. I usually just buy the previous year’s flagship because of the reduced price.
• Personal mostly: Audio jack, card slot, absolutely no notch nor rounded screen at the edge, great battery and a phone that can be handled, I don’t want to talk to a huge notebook.

That’s it for this week, everyone. As always, thanks for voting, thanks for the comments, and don’t forget to let us know what you thought of the results below.