Google has today launched a new phone picker on their Android.com site, aimed at helping you choose a new mobile phone.
The phone selector choice is a step-by-step guide, which evaluates your choices based on things you consider important when looking at phones. Once you start your selection, you’re presented with common categories of phone use, to determine which are important to you, with sub-questions asked to gather as much information as possible.
You can choose as many of the categories – or as few as three – as you wish, but it’s all designed to help you find the right phone for you. If you’re progressing through the selections and decide you’d like to change any of your answers, you can hover over the selection and choose ‘Edit’ or ‘Remove’ on any you’ve selected to help narrow down your search.
The picker is US-centric, with selections leading to asking you which US phone carrier you’d like to use, but you can choose to skip that step and see the results. It’s a neat little tool – though with some of the handsets you’ll find they’re not yet available – looking at you here LG G4 – but worth your time if you’re looking at what’s available.
Head on over to android.com/phones/whichphone/ to try it out for yourself.
Got to say, not at all impressed.
Not only are the ‘uses’ a bit limiting, there is no account taken of ‘cost’ – you know, the primary thing that most people look at. As such, even if you put in minimal ‘granny’ type uses – it’s incapable of saying “you might be better off with a MotoG”. Nope, it’s $800+ phones or nothing.
So where are the constraints “must fit in my pocket”, or “must cost under $500”, or “must have a microSD card and swappable battery”, or “must last at least two days on a charge”?
I copped the S6 Edge and the M9, based on how I use my devices.
I was recommended the LG G4, Motorola Droid Turbo, and the Nexus 6. Pretty solid recommendations right there.