Flagship Killer(s)????

For a long time, the mobile market in India has been dominated by few popular brands such as Samsung, Sony, Nokia (Now Microsoft) and LG. How Ever, the scenario is changing rapidly in the present.

Now a days the mobile market (especially the mid range segment) is crowded with mobiles from relatively unknown companies (Mostly from China) which offer powerful chipsets at affordable prices along with few good Camera features and other perks such as LTE connectivity, finger print scanner etc. So, a common consumer (like me) is very much confused while making a decision to buy a new mobile handset. So should we actually call all of these small branded mobiles as Flagship killers? or what is a flagship actually? Lets try to find out here..

First up, we should not consider all mobiles with fast/latest chip sets as flagship killers or good choices when making a decision. There are several factors that actually impact the functionality of a mobile other than just a fast processor or more RAM. The most important but often ignored factor is to consider the Customer Support or after sales support. For most upcoming brands, there is no significant customer support present in India. You can actually know this if you try to read the user feedback/reviews from popular eCommerce sites such as Flip kart and Amazon. It might seem at first to be a minor issue as brands such as YU promise doorstep service now a days. But, it has got lot of complexities involved which includes troubleshooting the device yourself by going into the reccoveries etc which is not possible for most common people other than Mobile Geeks. So, when a relatively small problem happens with your handset after you buy it, it will take longer durations for that to be recitified by the customer support of these new brands.

Second, Camera Performance. None of the mobiles from relatively unknown brands offer good quality of camera on their mobiles. At best, the picture quality is average. Dont get biased by the numbers which they provide such as mega pixel count etc, but what matters ultimately is the Quality/Detail in the picture we shoot.

Third, Previous generation Flagships from popular brands such as Samsung might be selling at unbelievably low prices now. For example, as of today, Samsung Galaxy S4 (Exynos Version) is selling for Rs.13999 on Snapdeal. In my opinion this is a steal because the mobile was selling for more than 30k at some point of time. It might not have some new age tricks such as a finger print scanner but for a consumer like me, this is not required by any means at least in the near future.

So, Do your research before buying a new mobile and act wise.

Peace....