One evening in the winter of 2017, I found myself lost in an Andalucian national park. What would have helped a lot, or so I think, was a Compass on my phone. I usually have a compass app on my phone (as it helps me ensure I don’t sleep with my head to the North, as recommended in Yoga). However, that year, I had bought a MotoG phone, which was a good phone but very surprisingly didn’t have compass capabilities. I had never even thought to check for it while buying the phone. Anyway, all said and done, that evening ended well enough (read about this solo hike here).

Now that I am looking to buy a new phone, many have suggested that I opt for the best camera phone (Google Pixel, it seems) because I travel so much. However, the compass incident is fresh in my mind, and I know there are many different features to look for in a phone as a traveller, digital nomad and cycle tourer. The camera is just one of the relevant features.

Here’s a list of the features I have thought about, and I may keep editing it time to time. If you consider any other features relevant, please share in comments 🙂

Features To Look for When Buying a Phone : As Per My Travel Style

Compass: as already highlighted, the importance of compass capabilities goes with out saying. Because I am usually opting for intrepid solo adventures – hikes, cycle tours and more – I really need the compass app. Though now in 2021, I think almost all medium – high range smartphones come with this capability. But always good to check.

Best GPS capability: It’s only while writing this post, I thought to check for gps capabilities in different phones, and (again surprisingly) different phones do have different gps capabilities as per online reviews.

Smartphone GPS quality – Rallycheck – this is interesting. Basically, now a days most phones have the American GPS system, but we could also get European, Russian, Chinese GPS systems in the phone. That’s v interesting. I hope India gets our own GPS system soon!

Note: not sure how reliable the data on this topic might be. But it’s worth a look and evaluation I feel.

Battery Life: Long distance cycling, hiking, leaves me without charging options. Sometimes even long flight hauls / bus journeys / train journeys require a longer battery life. So, this is a fairly important feature.

Better Mobile Signal Reception: Again, I didn’t think different phones had different signal reception capabilities (that would depend on the mobile network, isn’t it?!). However, in a friend’s house there was bad mobile connectivity for all phones except the iPhone. And this persisted for many months, so that was really odd. While travelling we would like the best connectivity possible… so we need to consider this.

“individual phones can vary in reception, earpiece quality, transmission quality through the microphone, and side-tone (the echo of your own voice that helps prevent you from yelling at the other person). A phone with middling to poor reception quality can be almost impossible to use in a marginal coverage area, while one with excellent reception can make the best of the little signal that’s available. Another point to consider: Some phones have much louder speakerphones than others.” – PC Mag

There isn’t too much data available around this, but a few articles seem to suggest Samsung Galaxy models tops the receptivity game compared to iPhones. But best to do your own review at the time of buying. (here’s a 2016 Nordic study on this)

Note: The data on this is also not too reliable. Again, we can do a quick check and see if we find anything that looks trustworthy.

Weight: Most phones in a similar price bracket will weigh more or less the same. But some travellers can be quite picky even of a few grams. If I want to mount my phone on the bike or car, then the weight may matter. So, I feel we shouldn’t opt for unusually large / heavy phones. I personally wouldn’t be too picky of small weight differences.

Note: better battery could cause increase in weight, so it is little bit of a trade off

Camera: I am so-so about considering the camera specs too strongly. For the usual good mobile photography, any medium-high range phone is good enough. A little lower quality can be balanced with better composition of the photo. If I am looking for a much higher level of photography, I feel, that one should invest in a camera (which is not the smartphone or opt for a second smartphone specifically for this purpose).

Depending on the kind of photography we want to do, it could be a go pro, dslr, drone, underwater camera or what ever else. But unlike what many people suggest, depending on the travel style, the camera is only one decisive factor for travellers while buying the phone … and not necessarily the most important.

Durability: for sure one requires durability. Adventurous travel specifically can put the phone in tough , more rigorous situations. And due to size constraints or because we may want to mount it somewhere, we can’t simply rely on a bulkier cover to protect it.

Some research about the durability / cover strength can be done.

Storage!! : surprisingly, hither to, I never thought much about the phone storage. In fact, I have often opted for higher range models by taking the low storage option. This seemed okay, but now that I am writing this blog and seriously considering what all features I need, I realise that more storage is of much value especially now that I have started a YouTube channel.

Or rather, a more serious YouTube channel than my earlier personal one. All my videos on my channel are 720kb quality, because I never have enough space on my phone to save a larger video file!!

And there have been times, even during some very interesting events / places that I find myself with limited storage and so I have to stop shooting a video to delete some earlier content and make space!

So, a big learning for me, in course of writing this blog – opt for good amount of storage space. My current OnePlus 5t has literally only 64GB data! How did that happen?!?!

And storage space can be augmented with SD cards and such but one time I tried using such a card, I found there were many rules about what can be stored on a SD card and what has to be on the phone itself. So it’s all a little tricky. In fact, a good topic to explore – Optimum usage of SD cards for traveller , digital nomads and cycle tourers 😉

Quick update: just found out about the SARS EU stat – which tells us the tentative mobile radiation from the particular model. Need to understand more about it. But good data to look out for.

Date of release: One last , but most key aspect to check for, is the date of release. It’s a rule of thumb I follow while buying laptops also… basically start shortlisting the most recently released phones – going back to the last 6 months – not more than that. This is a good way to ensure you get most of the updated features… now a days technology, especially smartphones are upgrading all the time. And we don’t want to feel obsolete too soon. So, it is a good practice to opt for the most recently released models.

I think these are all the most relevant features that I can think of for now. Not all are equally important.

Roughly, I would say, start looking at the most recently released phone and then check for – compass, battery life, storage as the primary selection criteria. I will select a range of phones based on these.

The camera, durability, weight is usually more or less similar in same-range phones, so they can be the next level of filters.

Finally, gps capability and mobile signal reception are somewhat iffy, because this data is not easily available. But, both of these are very key parameters to check on. If some reliable data/opinion is available, we use that.

That’s all folks. My fairly thought-through guide to buying a phone that is suitable for my travel, digital nomad and cycle touring lifestyle! ❤️

Depending on your travel style and other needs, I suggest you create your own similar list – to make life easier. So we don’t get totally baffled when we have to buy a new phone! 🙂