It is a common thing nowadays to head to YouTube and check out reviews and opinions of content creators of the phone you wish to buy: this singular practice has helped millions of consumers make better informed decisions especially when they watch unbiased, uninfluenced, expert reviews.
I have never bought a Smartphone phone that I did not take time to properly evaluate myself and on YouTube, I mean it’s my money and if I were to buy a bad phone with a very hefty price tag, then that is a mistake I would have to bear for the duration of that phone usage.
This article is stemmed directly from an experience I had yesterday, in which a customer actually raved and cursed at a roadside dealer because they supposedly sold him a bad phone. The phone in question was the spark 8C and the man had bought it for his son because the boy’s school had earlier in the year requested that all students either buy a phone or laptop for I.T studies, Now as the school was on holidays the boy had constantly complained that the device was lagging terribly when he tried to run Call of duty mobile on it and so the enraged father had taken the phone back to the dealer and demanded why they had sold him a bad phone. When further investigations were made -as the man threatened to involve the police if he was not immediately refunded- it was discovered that the boy had chosen the spark 8C because he had seen YouTube and facebook reviews of it which were favourable of the phone’s gaming capabilities, the man had stated that he had had to save up for some time only to be scammed -as he put it- by the phone seller.
Now, I went into that store to provide expert info for some group of A class customers who needed some bit of persuading on some phones and as the incident was unfolding I had to suspend my duties and intervene. And this is the conclusion I have come to.
Be wary of YouTube reviews especially if you are buying an entry level/budget device. When you unbox a phone for the first time, it’s going to respond extremely fast mainly because there are not any user installed apps on it yet. In simpler terms, the phone will not hang or freeze at first, because you have not installed your facebook, whatsapp, tiktok and or snapchat yet. When you eventually do, be it a week after or even sometimes a day, you are going to get that occasional freezes and delays; in the long run, those lags and delays are going to become frequent especially when you have installed a substantial amount of apps and games on it. When you watch YouTube reviewers install call of duty, genshin impact and or pubg mobile on entry level phones, case study Spark 8 (with its 64gbs of storage, Helio p22 processor, extended RAM and what not). The game is almost guaranteed to run fine for the tests, call of duty mobile when installed for the first time occupies about 2.5GBs of space without the additional files, when you run the game in a new account without downloading the additional maps and skins (which can amount to 16GB of storage when everything is installed) the game will run smoothly with little to no lags because 1. It’s a new phone 2. Your first match is going to be against the games A.I characters or bots if you may, which will not provide a lot of device stress compared to when you play against real life intense players.
Think of it this way, It’s like inviting a stranger into your home; first few days , this person will be at his/her best behaviours, in a month or less afterwards, the person true colours will then start to materialise and you will know exactly the kind of person in your home.
The point is this; it pays to know exactly what is under the hood of your Smartphone, YouTube reviewers do exactly this, but nothing beats knowing exactly what the processor and GPU inside your Smartphone can handle, you cannot expect the young he-goat in the base spark 8 to provide the kind of performance that the Lion of Judah inside of the Samsung Galaxy S22 ultra provides.
Be more informed, so that it will not be when you eventually storm a phone store with a maniacal, deathly look in your eyes, you exit humbled and disgraced. Cases like the fairytale above happen all the time to me, young customers come to me and they say; this phone is hanging and I bought it from this store less than a month ago, look I even have the warranty here.
I look at customers like this and I want to say “you bought rubbish and you are expecting paradise in your palm” but as a trained professional, what I say is “oh, sorry you may have too many apps installed, let me help you” and then you give me your phone, I uninstall some apps, clear a few app caches and give you back your phone and then collect your money as well. In your eyes, I may have even worked magic.

-sparrow