Facebook launches 'birthday cam' to send 15-second messages to friendsMumbai, Feb 24(AZINS) What really constitutes a ‘flagship’ smartphone? Is it one that packs the most bleeding-edge specifications? Or one that occupies a generally accepted ‘premium’ price band? Or is it a combination of the two?

If the past six years is anything to go by, the entire understanding that constitutes the term ‘premium smartphone’ has become entirely murky. From a time when premium phones were clearly ones that sported the best specifications of their time and were priced only within reach of the most well-heeled buyers, that equation is today comfortably rocked by the likes of Xiaomi, Huawei, Gionee, Oppo, LeEco and the like.

These brands have emerged from the shadows and have been consistently launching devices that literally make a mockery of the ones from established brands like Samsung, Sony, Apple et al. And seeing all of these announcements unfold over the last several years--and especially over the last few months--is nothing short of entertaining.

On the one hand, a company like Samsung announces their latest and greatest smartphone, then a few days later Xiaomi comes out and announces their top-of-the-line with comparable specifications and ‘premiumness’, at less than half the price.

It’s almost laughable the way this new breed of smartphone brands time and again throws down the gauntlet to the established stalwarts, challenging them on not just performance but these days even on the apparent use of exotic materials and craftsmanship--something that was, until not too long ago, exclusive to only the big brands. With the recently unveiled Xiaomi Mi 5 for example, its Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, 128GB internal storage, 5.15-inch screen, 3,000mAH camera along with the other camera, fingerprint and exotic construction goodies makes it virtually identical in specs to devices like Samsung’s Galaxy S7. But there’s nearly a two-for-one price ratio between these devices.

This slow but sure evolution of smartphone capabilities and premium construction has become the new norm--with the advancements in device fabrication being what it is, it is quite impossible to build a sucky phone these days, and it sure is a lot easier to build a pretty darn good one. And with the flash sale model further shaving off manufacturing overheads, cost benefits are being passed straight on to the buyer.

So it’s all hunky dory, right?

Well, I don’t think so.

These past few years, I’ve gone through about three smartphones, two of which have been from the relative ‘new kids on the block’--a Xiaomi Redmi 1S and a Huawei Honor 4X. And my experience with them has been intriguing. In both cases (although at altogether different times,) I decided to buy them simply because their bang-for-the-buck quotient was just too good to resist: unconventionally beefy specs for a great price.

In both cases, it started off splendidly--snappy performance coupled with the fun of scoffing at acquaintances who spent two to three times more on similarly spec’d phones from the ‘ ‘conventional’ brands.

But then--and here’s where it got surprising--with both the Redmi 1S and the Honor 4X, after about six months into use their performance started deteriorating all too quickly. With the Redmi 1S, the battery lost its ability hold charge--the phone would barely last me through half a day. With the Honor 4X, the phone became consistently unstable (dialer not loading contacts, slow response etc) that even factory resets and OS updates couldn’t fix. And this couldn’t even be attributed to a stray case--another acquaintance who bought the phone the same time as I did experienced a similar turn for the worse at almost the same time as mine!

This led me to thinking--in this incessant, high-stakes-low-margins-high-volumes smartphone race, the only way manufacturers can afford to throw in such high specs at such low prices, is if there’s a trade off on the quality of some of the sub-systems: the battery and the flash storage being prime examples. These components can be sourced from any number of vendors where quality can vary greatly--especially regarding the number of cycles they can withstand before electrical failure becomes inevitable.

And this situation would fit quite conveniently into today’s prevailing consumer culture of users being accustomed to changing devices more often than ever before. Two years? No way--most of us change our phones every year. Sometimes even sooner.

So here’s the thing--I’m all for the leapfrogging progress in the smartphone segment, where consumers are getting more value for their money than ever before.

But let’s also put longevity up there in the list of must-haves, shall we?