"Phone buying guide for Pokemon Go."

#PokemonGO: This guide is a work in progress! Couple of days/weeks of constantly adding informationHello all, I am GoogleOverk and an avid phone/computer nerd. I research phones and watch reviews and videos about them all the time. I switch from phones often and try them out, I have a good feel for the entire works of a smartphone (Android in general) and I would like to share my expertise with the Pokemon Go community as I too enjoy this game. I will start out by explaining some basic principles and parts of smartphones that are the most optimal for Pokemon Go play and usage. Obviously budget comes into play as well. I have experience with most brands and otherwise I got my knowledge through videos and or reviews. I do in fact like to explain things, sometimes my typing may get confusing however. I will spell check and sentence check, I do type fast and live in the Netherlands so English is not my first language, however I am skilled in it.Note: This guide is for Android phones, I do not have much experience with Iphones!SoCLet’s start here. The SoC (System-on-Chip) is basically the heart of your phone, where it’s performance comes from in short. Unlike processors in computers which are 1 part the SoC has everything integrated on a board, the graphics processor, modules for signals etc. It’s mostly on the SoC. (more info here for the curious: http://ift.tt/1IknEu9)Now you have several SoC manufacturers. The main manufacturer is Qualcomm, they create or have created the vast majority of SoC’s, their line of SoC’s is called Snapdragon and are as a whole solid, , which is expected if you dominate the mobile SoC supply market.The Snapdragons are generally branded by their numbers, 4xxx (say a 425) is the lower end, these are still nice processors for daily use, they lagg and/or stutter more, but you could easily play Pokemon Go on them, a friend of mine and my little sister have the Moto G 3rd gen (so the 2015 version). It has a Snapdragon 410 and runs the game fine. I have experienced this firsthand and have gone on Pokemon Go trips with that friend. Great for people that want to spend little on a phone.The middle/middle of the road segment starts with a 6xxx number (so the 625 for example). If the budget SoC’s were solid, these are definitely OK. I have a 625 in my phone and can say this SoC in particular is absolutely incredible when it comes to it’s extreme (and I mean it when I say extreme) efficiency and outstanding performance, while still managing to not give a hint of overheating. Qualcomm did a jaw-dropping job with this chip.The high end/upper end segment starts with 8xxx (so the latest 835 for example). These chips have the most performance and horsepower. This speaks for itself. This horsepower comes at a cost however, batterylife, this is why the mid-segment will have more batterylife in general, it’s very noticeable.Another SoC maker is Samsung itself, they create the Exynos line, which are very solid SoC’s. The Exynox SoC’s are used in Europe’s Samsung Galaxy’s starting from the S6 and up. In America the Snapdragon is used in Galaxies (except for the S6 and S6 Edge which also have the Exynos SoC's in America). While both options are solid, the Exynos processors are as a whole a bit more power-efficient. Snapdragons have a very slight edge in graphical horsepower, however this would be unnoticeable.Huawei also has their SoC’s, the Kirin line. I do not have much experience with them, but from what I heard/can conclude they are good to excellent.Mediatek is also a brand that creates SoC’s, they are the lower end however and are generally not as good, however I must say I do not have (much) experience with them.ScreenNow we will talk about screens. Let’s start with the technologies. There are 2 camps, AMOLED and LCD. AMOLED stands for active-matrix organic light-emitting diode. LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display. Liquid Crystal Display’s generally produce more natural colours, they don’t have that ‘pop’ like for example Samsung’s AMOLED screens have, the colours on AMOLED are oversaturated, I do like this effect myself, as it creates deeper blacks too, some people however might prefer LCD colours, to have their Mons seem more to their realistic representation, this is probably not something that interests people however, AMOLED still displays the colours just absolutely fine and the difference is very small, you would not even notice if you don’t put an LCD and AMOLED side by side. LCDs work by lighting up ALL the pixels at the back of the panel, this means your whole screen is lighting up constantly, which in turn costs more battery when the screen is on. LCDs do not have burn-in problems like AMOLED can have. (I say can, it doesn’t happen often enough to be a problem at all, I certainly never saw it)AMOLEDs are different in how they work. First the pixels light up individually, so not a whole backpanel light like with LCDs, this means that if you display black (I mean true black, not something that’s lightly black) that the pixels in that part of the screen will not turn on, thus saving battery, would you have a black blackground, that would save on battery. This is also why the Battery Saver option in Pokemon Go only actually works on AMOLED screens, because the screen turns black. It’s pretty much useless on LCD. AMOLEDs also have more saturated colours that they display, it ‘pops’ more, the blacks are truly richly black and so on.Now there is also the Full HD vs the Quad HD vs HD matter. HD is 720, Full HD is 1080p and Quad HD is 1440p. Generally Quad HD’s will require more power, this is logical, as the SoC needs to drive more pixels per given inch. Full HD and HD subsequently require less power. Quad HD is very nice for crisp text in long write-ups like these, but in Pokemon Go it’s useless. Full HD is what most phones in the mid-range have and is perfect. HD is perfect too, as this is mainly used on phones that are a little smaller than mid-range or high-end phones and thus the pixels are spread less, so it’s still good-looking.Battery and batterylifeHere comes the most important part. Battery is expressed in ‘mAh’ in phones. The higher the battery capacity the more battery, or one would think so right? Well yes and no. Certainly a larger capacity provides more juice, but it’s the SoC and screen (and software) that determine the eventual batterylife in Pokemon Go use. If you have a higher end phone the SoC is going to require more power than a mid-class phone. This is not weird, higher end phones require them to be at the top in performance in every way. Certainly the higher end SoC’s are efficient, but their higher power usage simply negates that often coupled with the fact that manufacturers put middle of the road batteries in higher end phones. For optimum batterylife you want to search for more mid-range phones as the SoC’s in these mid-range phones have more efficiency to them but enough power to play Pokemon Go smoothly. ‘But GoogleOverk, higher end means better performance right?’ yes, definitely. You may stutter less here and there but in 2017 we have reached the point that mid-range and even low-end processor can play Pokemon Go with ease, why sacrifice this efficiency? With that comes that you don’t have to put down nearly as much money. Take your Magikarp out for a dinner at a sushi restaurant with that leftover money.GyroscopeA sensor which is needed to be able to use AR while catching Pokemon. Now I personally play without AR as it is obviously easier to catch Pokemon, but if you want AR make sure it’s in there. Most phones have this, but lower-end phones can also have them excluded. A gyroscope is also required to make the Battery Saver option work.Memory/RAMWhen you open an app and switch, the app you switched away from will stay in the background. The phone stores it in RAM (Random-Access-Memory). The more RAM you have, the more apps you can have open at the same time. In my opinion the minimum for a phone, even budget, is 2GB of RAM, preferably 3 or more for optimal usage. Generally most phones have enough or more than enough. If you switch back to an app and that app doesn't reload (think Chrome pages refreshing completely and such) that is enough RAM working in your favour.This concludes the basic concepts and explanations regarding phones. I will now continue to describe as much phones as I can that I have deemed fit for Pokemon Go usage and will give my experience and/or conclusion of them. I will try to do as many as I possibly can, because there are way too many phones out there. I will add more every day.GPSThis stands for Global Positioning system. 99% of phones have GPS that works well, this should actually be a minor issue in theory. If something is off I will mention it in the guide when I describe a phone, actually, scratch that. I wouldn't even talk about the phone, I wouldn't describe it here.SamsungS7 and S7 EdgeBasically the same internals except for the battery. The S7 and S7 are overall decent devices in terms of performance. They do have Samsung’s own software and skins over it but that is mostly not an issue. I have owned an S7 Edge for a week, I played Pokemon Go on it during that week, it’s good. I had the Exynos version as I live in Europe, for you Americans, you get the Snapdragon 820 in it which should translate in less battery than the EU version. I had some instances of stuttering, which I attribute to Samsung’s software/skin on the phone. The S7 Edge has a bigger screen and edges around the screens than the S7, this might be an annoyance for you, a Pokeball could be accidently thrown or something in the capture screen, you might let the phone fall more easily etc. The S7 Edge does come in the fantastic colour of Coral Blue however, which I love. The S7 Edge has a 3500 mAh battery and the S7 has a 3000 mAh battery. This results in the S7 Edge having about 15% more batterylife. They both have AMOLED screens for those popping colours and rich blacks, and that battery-saving option of course. The screens are Quad HD however.S8 and S8+While these 2 phones are actually too new for me to say anything conclusive about them, their specifications should be around the same for S7 and S7 Edge comparison in a nutshell. You can easily apply the same principles, I would be surprised if they were much different.S6, S6 Edge and S6 Edge+The Samsung Galaxy S6 is still a good phone though when the phone came out it already had a small-ish battery at 2550 mAh. The performance should be decent like on the S7 and S7 Edge. I wouldn’t expect the battery to be the same though, slightly worse actually due to the older SoC and also still having a Quad HD display. The screen is AMOLED like most of Samsung’s phones, so the power saving option is there. The Edge and Edge+ might have the same problems like the S7 Edge, the annoying screenside. I would not put much stock in the S6 Edge+ battery, as it’s 3000 mAh, the screen is 5,7 inches and has an older and thus slightly less efficient SoC.Samsung A5 (2017)This is a decent mid-range phone. With the same 5.2 inch screen size as the S7 and a FullHD screen instead of QuadHD, which will help drain less battery. The screen is AMOLED for those battery saving features and the SoC is a proprietary Exynos one, I looked it up and it has an Exynos one in all regions, so this shouldn’t be different. It has 3GB of RAM, so that should be good to work with. The battery capacity is 3000 mAh. It should be better than the S7’s battery by a good margin, 20% at least I would guesstimate. The performance should 99% fine too, you should encounter no problems, but on this I would watch some video reviews to make sure.HTCHTC 10The only phone of HTC worthwhile of buying at this moment. The HTC 10 is a phone I also had for a while. The screen is LCD, which is surprising in today’s market. Yet, the battery should be on par with the S7, it’s very close. It also has a 3000 mAh battery. The HTC 10’s LCD screen also sports Quad HD and is 5,2 inches. One upside is that the audio on this phones is beyond excellent, they have a dedicated DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) which means that sound coming from this phone should be absolutely superb. The HTC 10, unlike the Samsung line is extremely speedy/zippy/fast. I have no doubt that this phone would not lagg/stutter at all and would give you extremely smooth performance.HTC M9This phone is not bad in theory, but it has the Snapdragon 810, which had some problems. Now these problems were overblown, but the battery is not so good on the HTC M9, it has a 2840 mAh battery capacity, some call the batterylife okay, and some call it trash. The M9 has a LCD screen at FullHD resolution and has front firing speakers unlike it’s younger and newer HTC 10 brother, which gives LOUD sound, if that’s your thing. It should still have good performance and be very fast however. Like the HTC 10 the software is light.MotorolaMoto G3 (2015)Motorola did well with this phone at the time. The phone comes in 1GB RAM/8GB storage and 2GB RAM/16GB storage configurations. Suffice to say, DO NOT buy the 1GB/8GB one. The RAM is too little for Android these days (though somehow my little sister manages, but she only watches Youtube) and the storage is definitely filled up in in the blink of an eye. The 2GB/16GB configuration is the minimum in terms of RAM and if you don’t have much storage needs, but it works. The Moto G3 has a 720p HD screen with LCD technology, so it doesn’t have any use of the battery saving mode. It however is a nice phone for people who don’t want large phones as the screen is 5 inches and the phone holds well in the hand. This phone does not have a gyroscope, so AR and Battery Saver mode are out of the question! The Moto G3 has a low-end SoC. That’s right, it’s the minimum, but it works! The only reason I mention this phone is because you could get it for a very, very, very low price (2ndhand?) if you wanted, but I would actually not bother if you could get a newer Motorola G handset.Moto G4 (2016) and G4 PlusNow the Moto G4 are outliers in that they suddenly were made with a 5,5 inch screen, so this is not for the people who hate having a phone that is a bit larger. The Moto G4’s and Plus’s screens are 1080p and an LCD. So this does not benefit from the Battery Saving mode! The SoC used in the G4 and Plus is the Snapdragon 617 which is decent, but had/has some small overheating problems. Nothing major however. It should actually be pretty good in the battery department as multiple users have reported. 3000 mAh and a mid-range processor ensures for a decent to good battery. The performance should be smooth/decent/good considering it’s a midrange processor. I also had a phone, the Moto X Play, with this SoC’s little brother, the Snapdragon 615. Played Pokemon Go fine, that phone however did not have a gyroscope. The big difference in the phones is the camera which is better on the Plus and the fingerprint sensor which is present on the Plus and not on the normal G4. Now there is some confusion over whether the normal G4 has a gyroscope or not and the general consensus is that it does, this video shows that AR works fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qGSJmh2eBUMoto G5 (2017) and Moto G5 PlusThese phones just came out and honestly are pretty damn impressive. The G5 has a 5 inch LCD screen at 1080p and a 2800 mAh battery capacity. It has a Snapdragon 430 SoC, so it should play Pokemon Go without issue. (I mean hey if the 2015 Moto G can do it…) It has 3GB of RAM, so there is enough breathing room there. Unlike the G4 the normal G5 does have a fingerprint scanner, but you see the tradeoff… a midrange vs lower end SoC, though this shouldn’t make too much difference at all seeing as the lower end 430 SoC is newer.The G5 Plus has a 5,2 inch LCD screen at 1080p, so it’s slightly bigger. The Plus also has the best processor (in my opinion) which is a midrange one, the Snapdragon 625. I can not express in mere words how well this processor has done in so many phones since it came out last year, in both performance and efficiency. I have it in my device and it is outstanding. So the Plus should crush in PoGo. The battery capacity is a slightly bigger 3000 mAh, but considering the efficiency of the 625 this battery is stretched very, very well so battery should honestly be good to excellent. They both have LCD screens, so Battery Saving mode is out. Both have gyroscopes for AR.Moto Z PlayThere are few if any phones that come close to beating this phone when it comes to it’s effectiveness in Pokemon Go. This is a midrange phone with a 5,5 inch AMOLED screen at 1080p. It has the Snapdragon 625 in it so you know it’ll be absolutely great in both battery and performance. The battery capacity is 3500 mAH, which the Moto Z Play should really stretch out. I actually had this phone and was shocked by the battery.The phone has 3GB of RAM so you have enough there. The phone also has access to the Moto Mods, which are special modification parts that you can slap on your phone on the backside via the magnets there (which you see on the backside of the phone). One such mod is a batterypack mod, which you simply slap on and it charges the phone. It’s the convenience of a powerbank, without the wires or the bank. If you do not have access to the Lenovo P2 this phone is by far the best one for Pokemon Go in my honest opinion. It is a battery warrior and does it all without losing any performance thanks to running Android stock without a skin.The screen is AMOLED so Battery Saving mode does in fact work, it of course has a gyroscope for the mid-range price. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2pRVfOc