Buying a mobile phone is the last stop in your journey of endless days spent on choosing one. Sure, you can splurge on a mobile that’s just entered into the market. But it doesn’t hurt to be a little objective and buy a mobile with features you will definitely use rather than an expensive device that you wouldn’t know how to use even if you wanted to. The point is, it’s better to figure out why you want to buy a particular mobile. For those who don’t have any handset in mind, here’s how you can go about freezing on the right one.

What kind of a buyer are you?
The first criterion for choosing a mobile phone is assessing yourself and your needs. Or if the mobile is a gift, then assessing the type of person your friend/relative is. If you’re a tech enthusiast, waiting to get your hands on the latest in the tech world pronto, then you’ve already narrowed your choices to the phones that offer new and innovative technologies – the HTC Touch with touchscreen and Touch Flo technology. If you’re a slightly butter-fingered person, then the ideal option would be a phone that can stand being knocked around a few times such as the Nokia E61i. If you are the strictly no-frills, person, then you only need to look at basic entry-level phones. Options are aplenty among brands such as Nokia (the 6080 or the 2630 priced around 5K), or the Motorola W215 in the same range, the red hot Samsung SGH C170 under 3K or the under 5K Sony Ericsson T250i.

What do you want it for?
Second step – what use are you going to put your mobile to apart from making and receiving calls and SMS. There’s so much you can do with your mobile these days. You can listen to songs, watch videos, play game, surf the net, make presentations, locate places - the list is endless. You have to figure what you want, if it is instant Internet connectivity, Office applications, PDA functionalities then BlackBerry, HTC smartphones offer plenty of options. There are also various PDA mobile phones that do a marvelous job at browsing such as the Qwerty Palm Treo 750, available for Rs 26,990, or the HTC P3300 with Wi-Fi feature, priced Rs 23,000. Both of the above are Windows Mobile phones (5.0 Pocket PC edition). Smartphones such as E61i and the Sony Ericsson P990i is good for surfing. If you want oodles of music ready at hand, there’s Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series and Nokia’s XpressMusic. If you want a digicam double, then you have plenty of 5-megapixel options – Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson K850i, LG KU990, there is also Sony Ericsson’s CyberShot series.