Autonomy and performance are the main purchasing criteria of our readers

Buying a smartphone is not necessarily very simple as the market is flooded with products that are more different than each other. To find your way around, it is important to establish selection criteria. To find out which elements are most important to you, we conducted a major survey of our readers.

Last summer, we launched a major survey among our readers. The idea was to get a better idea of ​​your uses, your preferences and the way you use your smartphones. 7,420 people did us the honor of answering our questionnaire. Obviously, the data we have collected can certainly not replace the real market studies carried out by polling institutes.

Nevertheless, the FrAndroid community is made up of technophiles of all kinds. Knowing the different habits of use and consumption helps to get a good idea of ​​the mobile market. The answers mainly come from France, but several Internet users from Belgium, Canada, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Morocco and even Senegal took part in the survey.

We have compiled many datasets. In order not to write an incomprehensible paper drowned in a forest of numbers, we have decided to give you a report, point by point, through various articles. In each of the papers, we highlight a relevant element of our study.

What is your favorite mobile operator?

For the first edition, we focused on French operators in order to find out your level of satisfaction in terms of network coverage, services and prices. For this second episode, we are interested in smartphones. Which brands are the most popular? Is the user experience satisfactory? How often do you buy a terminal? So many questions that we looked into.

This summer, we launched a major survey on FrAndroid to find out more about your uses and your preferences in terms of smartphones and all the services related to them. You have…Read more

What is your favorite builder?

The second edition, meanwhile, was an opportunity to talk about your favorite smartphone brands. In particular, we discussed the satisfaction rate in terms of user experience, monitoring of updates or the lifespan of a terminal.

7,420 of our readers responded to our major survey launched last summer. Thanks to you, we were able to get a better idea of ​​the uses and preferences of smartphone users. These data…Read more

How much for a new smartphone?

For the third installment of our survey, we wanted to know more about the process of buying a new smartphone.

The first question that obviously arose for us was how much money our readers were willing to spend to get a new mobile.

If we observe the answers of the participants, we can realize that our community does not generally have delusions of grandeur, but seems to remain realistic when buying a new phone and is undoubtedly looking for the best balance between price and experience. Indeed, of the 7,420 participants, 2,180 answered that they could invest a maximum of between 300 and 400 euros for a new mobile. This corresponds to 29.4%. Note that we are talking here about a bare smartphone, that is to say, without subsidy or subscription.

Note also that more than 11% of our readers can spend more than 600 euros for such a purchase, while very few of you do not want to spend more than 100 euros (less than 1%). In other words, more of you are considering getting a Huawei Mate 9, or the future LG G6 and Samsung Galaxy S8 rather than a very cheap product.

Predominant criteria

For this survey, we asked Internet users to indicate which criteria were predominant when choosing a new smartphone. Our process was quite simple. Indeed, we have proposed eleven different criteria. For each of them, readers had to indicate the level of importance they gave to them by assigning a score on a scale of 1 to 5. Here is how we interpreted the said scores:

Thus, we were able to observe very interesting results on what matters most to the users who form our community vis-à-vis their smartphones.

Price

As we have seen just above, not all of our readers allocate the same budget to the purchase of a new smartphone. For 40.7% of participants, the question is downright crucial and they categorically refuse to pay more than they should. To better understand the extent to which price is taken into account, we can notably mention the fact that only 7.4% of the 7,420 people surveyed consider it to be of little or no importance.

Camera

The most rational people do not fail to recall that a telephone is primarily used to telephone. Nevertheless, you would have to live with blinders not to realize how smartphones have become cameras that you take everywhere with you. For a quarter of you, the purchase of a new terminal is unthinkable if the photo sensor does not meet your requirements. It should also be noted that the majority – 37.3% of respondents – believe that this is a very important element to take into account.

Autonomy

Twelve. This is precisely the number of participants in our survey who do not attach importance to the autonomy of their smartphone. One can legitimately wonder why someone is not interested in the endurance of his mobile phone (supposed to accompany us everywhere). Unsurprisingly, more than 90% of you consider this to be the main selection criterion or, at least, a very important element.

Bigger screen

Some users want to buy smartphones with a larger screen than the previous one and there are relatively many of them in our community. More than 20% of our readers believe that a longer panel is absolutely necessary, while a third of them find this to be very important information to know before buying.

Screen Definition

Very few of our readers (1.4%) do not attach any importance to the definition of their screen. It's hardly surprising considering how much time you can spend staring at your phone. In one day, we sometimes don't realize the number of images we see, nor all the series that some bingewatch, especially on Netflix. It is therefore normal to see that with 44.9%, you are a majority to attach great importance to it.

Smartphone design

If the design of your smartphone does not suit you, it is still very disturbing since it is an object taken in hand several times a day. The results observed above are therefore quite consistent with 36.7% of readers who think that very important attention should be paid to this element when buying a new smartphone. Moreover, for more than 21% of you, there is no point in getting a new phone if it does not look good.

Performance

For half of our readers, good performance is a must and their new smartphones can't deviate from the rule. Nearly 40% of participants believe that this is a very important criterion. This is easily explained by the fact that no sane person wants to lug around a device that keeps slowing down.

Interface

A fluid and easy-to-use interface is always more pleasant than a poorly thought out experience. For 42.1% of respondents, the appreciation of this detail is very important before buying a smartphone. We note all the same that more than 20% give it only a relative interest - equivalent to the mark of 3/5 in our scale mentioned above.

Tracking updates

Thanks to the answers of our readers, we can better realize to what extent the manufacturers must ensure a good follow-up of the updates, whether they relate to the pure software part or security. Almost 90% of participants consider this to be an indispensable or at least very important element. We all the more regret the slow deployment of the final version of Android 7.0 Nougat. In this regard, we have listed all the updated terminals, as well as the new features brought by the new Google OS.

After-sales service in France

The question on the importance of an after-sales service located in France is the one that seems to have received the most different opinions. One can indeed see all opinions are represented quite significantly. As evidenced by the 28.1% of people who answered that it was "fairly important", it seems that this detail is rather considered a plus, but not necessarily essential. This suggests that part of our community has never had to deal with after-sales service and/or that they would not hesitate to import a smartphone, such as from China.

The criteria in order of importance

So that you can get a good idea of ​​which criteria are considered to be the most important overall, we've ranked them by how many people felt it was predominant or very important — 4 responses and 5 on our scale described above.

Thus, autonomy and performance are the most important criteria according to you, with respectively 90.3% and 89.6% of people indicating that they are predominant or very important elements. The follow-up of updates closes the podium while the presence of an after-sales service in France ends up dead last in this ranking.

Data set

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