Back To School 2012: Why You Should Wait To Buy That New Phone - TeensTalkTech (blog)

Thought all those changes coming to computers were big? Well, they’re nothing compared to what’s about to happen with phones. All the big playersâ€" Android, Windows Phone and of course, the iPhoneâ€" are due for major upgrades within the next month (we’re talking iPhone 5 big). And while there are some great deals available for today’s phones, we really think you should wait a little bit longer before signing that new 2 year contract. As we’ve said, these are huge changes.

So, what can we expect? Read on.

iPhone 5

A mock-up of what we can expect the next iPhone to look like

The hype around the next iPhone is at a fever pitch and it seems all but confirmed that it finally be released this month. Now it may be called iPhone 5 or just iPhone, but whatever the name, this looks to be the phone of the year.

Specs wise the new iPhone is rumored to have an all new design (similar to the mock-up you see aboveâ€" that’s not an actual iPhone just what it is expected to look like) with a 4 inch screen (finally!), smaller dock connector (so the phone can be thinner), a faster processor with 1 GB of RAM, and of course, 4G LTE support. Throw in all the iOS 6 improvementsâ€" like a new Maps app with turn-by-turn GPS, a much improved Siri (she now does sports, movies and restaurants), and built-in Facebook integrationâ€" it’s not hard to see why there’s all this hype.

Of course as with all Apple rumors this can all change (remember all the rumors for the iPhone 5 coming last year?), but if you’re looking for any new phone we recommend you try and wait until after September 12th when this new iPhone is expected to be announced.

Windows Phone 8

The first Windows Phone 8 deviceâ€" the Samsung Ativ S

Apple isn’t the only one with major upgrades coming in September. This Wednesday, September 5th, Microsoft and Nokia are holding an event where they are expected to finally fully unveil Windows Phone 8, the next major upgrade to Windows Phone. While Windows Phone hasn’t been anywhere near as popular as Android or the iPhone, it has gotten much better over the years and Windows Phone 8 looks to take it up another notch.

Microsoft has been keeping a lot of the new features of Windows Phone 8 under wraps, but we do know it’s hardware will be much better thanks to support for dual core processors and HD screens. This means the new phones will not just look sharper, but be much faster too. And with new phones expected from Nokia, Samsung (Samsung already announced their first Windows Phone 8 phone, the Ativ S above) and HTC you know these phones will have great screens, designs and cameras.

It remains to be seen if it’s better than the new iPhone, but with that Microsoft and Nokia event in a few days we’ll know soon enough.

Android

With the exception of the Galaxy S III, there aren’t that many Android devices that we’d recommend buying today. The problem with Android is the same as it’s always beenâ€" the long wait for updates.

Sure a whole bunch of current devices like the HTC One X that should receive updates to the latest and great version of Android, called Jelly Bean, but we have no idea when. Samsung at least has said that the Galaxy S III (which is also arguably the best Android phone out there today, or tied with the One X) will at least receive the update “very soon.”

Android Jelly Bean is much faster than older versions of Android (thanks to what Google calls Project Butter) and brings some great new features to Android such as Google Now, Google’s very good answer to Siri on the iPhone. But again, unless you hacked your phone or have the Nexus 7 tablet you wouldn’t know this. This is major problem Google has long promised to fix, but they still haven’t. Official updates take forever. By comparison, the three years old iPhone 3GS will get iOS 6 later this year and Microsoft has promised that all Windows Phone 8 phones will get updates for at least 18 months. When you sign that new 2 year contract it’s nice to know that you can expect your phone to get better over the years. Let’s hope Google finally fixes this soon.

Plus there are a whole bunch of new Android phones due to come out over the next month. Motorola and Verizon also have a big event this Wednesday where they are expected to announce the next Droid Razr, and successors to both the Galaxy Nexus and HTC One X are rumored to be right around the corner.

So if you’re looking for a new Android phone we recommend you wait for these, phones that we know won’t be left behind right away.

Wrap Up

As you can see, there’s a lot of big stuff about to go down, and if you’re looking for a new phone, we really think you should hold off on buying for at least a couple more weeks to see what happens. And speaking of new phonesâ€" which of these do you want as your next phone: iPhone 5? Galaxy S III? A new Windows Phone? Let us know in the comments.