What phone features are most important to you?

Ease of use – a third of Brits voted this as their most important smartphone feature in a uSwitch survey. A fifth put phone call reception top, with an equal amount choosing battery life. Flash features fell by the wayside.

Sure, a fingerprint scanner is nice and all, but at the end of the day it’s of no use when the battery runs out.

I own a Google Nexus 4, and I have to say the things I appreciate most are its speed, ease of use and the ability to customise the software. What do I most dislike about it? Its poor battery life and its average camera.

Uswitch’s survey confirms that better battery life would sway customers, with 89% saying that this would make them more likely to buy a particular phone. Interestingly, waterproofing or a zoom camera lens were also popular reasons to buy one phone over another.

An aversion to gimmicks

Ernest Doku from uSwitch comments on the results:

‘It’s becoming increasingly hard for smartphone makers to differentiate their handsets from those of their rivals. They hope that flash features like fingerprint ID on the iPhone 5s, or Amazon’s Fire Phone and its “Dynamic Perspective” display, will give their phones the edge.

‘However, our research shows that Brits can spot a gimmick from a mile away. It’s actually the basics that affect the every day user experience – like long battery life and a robust design – that people really care about.’

What smartphone features are more important to you? And if you’re loyal to a particular make of phone, what one or two features in a competitor’s phone would make you want to switch sides?