7. Technical features

We have discussed the practical features they offer you in the previous page. But in order to sensibly compare mobile phones you need to know a little about how they work and what technical features make one phone better than another one.

How to connect

All mobile phones work by sending radio signals to the nearest mobile phone mast. These masts are owned by various mobile operators so you need to have a contract or pay-as-you-go card to make a connection.

In addition to the telephone service, mobiles can share information with others close by. This is achieved with Bluetooth. This is a short range technology ( a few yards) that allows you to share photos and information with friends.

Another common way to communicate is Wi-Fi. This is another radio technology that works over a much longer distance than Bluetooth. Usually Wi-Fi is used to connect to the Internet, although the normal telephone service allows you to do that as well.

We explain both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in much more detail here if you want to know more about it.

Memory

This determines the storage capacity of the phone. Memory is measured in gigabytes. The more memory the phone has, the more it can store. There are two very popular flash memory card formats available namely SD (Secure Digital) cards. This can typically hold 2GB of data. The other one is SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) that can store up to 32GB of data.