Micromax, Maxx, LAVA, Intex, Fly
and following manufacturers on the basis of very less popularity and market presence:
Asus, Acer, HP, Huawei
Unless you are not an Apple fan you have got a lot of choices out there in the market for a smartphone and selecting one among them is not an easy job. People spend weeks and months researching and yet they remain confused. Price range plays an important role in this confusion. For example a phone may provide a good screen resolution under 12k but a similar phone with a good reputation may have a smaller screen resolution but more memory. Well for some screen resolution may not matter at all or "retina display" may not be in their preferences. Lets get started on the topic:
Everything comes with a cost!
If you want a cheap/economical smartphone then forget about smartphone all together. Because smartphones are like luxury cars you can't have a cheap economical luxury car. You'll get what you pay and the same rule is applied to smartphones. There is a fair gap between just a phone and a smartphone and in that gap lies hundreds of devices (lets call such a device "semi-smartphone" or just a "semy"). In Indian market semys price range is around Rs. 7k-16k. However there are some phones which offer good features in this range but still they remain behind. For example Motorola Defy is a good phone with a price tag 16k but still runs on Android 2.1, on the other hand Samsung Galaxy Ace has Android 2.2 but has less resolution and very less internal memory than Defy and comes with a price tag of 15.2k
So you'll have to decide what you really want: a semy? or a real smartphone? Once you have fixed your budget range start researching.
Search!! Research!! Re-research!!
Screen type, resolution and size
Good screen resolution means a crisp looking screen as well as you can accommodate more stuff on the screen than a phone having a smaller resolution. Higher resolution screens are generally in bigger size. A big screen increases the readability, gives a better internet browsing experience, is always good for watching videos. Devices like HTC Sensation and iPhone 4 has got great screen resolution.
http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-20056639-85.html
Support for various email services like Microsoft ActiveSync, POP3, IMAP etc with push notifications
BlackBerry dominated in the business phone market because of this feature. A smartphone should be able to integrate any popular email service without an fuss. Android phones have a history of handling ActiveSync badly. But there are workarounds like Touchdown app or MailDroid.
Good camera for taking pictures and HD videos
Only megapixels in a camera doesn't ensure better quality of photos. Attributes like dual LED flash, auto focus etc matter too. Many Android phones come with 8 Megapixel camera with dual flash and also have the capability to shoot HD videos. But still a smartphone is no replacement of a good digicam. If you want some high quality images then you'll have to carry your digicam along with your smartphone. So this feature should not be given a great importance.
Video chat support with front camera
This feature may not matter to many in India because we are still far behind in terms of good 3G coverage and public Wi-Fi hotspots is a dream. However it is a good to have feature for future. Apple's FaceTime application comes with a price but on the other hand Android's integrated g-talk video chat is absolutely free (on android 2.3.4).
Superior battery life
Most important feature of a phone and many smartphones are dumb in this area. Many manufactures tend to claim some amazing figures and after purchase those claim turn out to be a big farce. If a smartphone can give you a whole day on EDGE/3G network with a few small calls in between without a recharge, its doing great.
Battery size matters too, also try to look for a spec "Battery Capacity", more mAh means it has better will be the battery life.
Loads of games and apps
Straightaway Nokia (Ovi) fails here. iPhone app store dominates in every aspect. However Android market is not far behind, it has tonnes of apps and games and many of them are free. Developers target iOS first and then Android.
Maps with GPS support
http://www.google.com/mobile/maps/
Good build quality
Many HTC phones come with metallic uni-body, they provide a better build quality than plastic/glass body ones. But still a touch screen phone is a fragile device. There are a few phones in the market which use a gorilla glass to protect the screen. Motorola Defy is one tough phone, its a water resistant and dust proof with a Gorilla Glass. Find out more about gorilla glass:
http://gizmodo.com/5726124/what-is-gorilla-glass
Touch response
Capacitive touch screens give a better performance over resistive ones but still many phones have sluggish touch response despite of having a capacitive screen. Screen performance not only depends on screen type it also depends on processor speed, GPU speed, GPU support for UI, application launcher and memory. iOS has the GPU support for its UI but Android lacks it, that's the main reason behind iOS' great UI experience over Android phones. GPU support for UI is there in Android from 2.4 onwards but we are yet to see a phone with Android 2.4, tablets having Android 2.4+ use GPU for UI.
When GPU support is not there for UI, processor takes all the load for any user interaction. Same goes for RAM, more memory means you can run more programs smoothly. Less memory will result in a slower phone and will cause it hang frequently. Any Android phone having 800MHz-1GHz processing speed with 512MB RAM runs smoother (not smooth!). In case of iPhone you don't have to worry about all these figures.
Stock launcher of Android is one of the worst launchers, however you have lots of choices in the Android Market e.g. GO Launcher EX is far better than the stock one. Go to the market url and search for the launcher or click here.
Good support for many Google Services (gmail, maps, gtalk etc)
A smartphone should provide a good integration with Google services which include gtalk, gmail, maps, youtube, voice etc.
Conclusion
We can safely strike out Symbian based Nokia phones, BlackBerry phones and Samsung's Bada based phones from the equation.
If you want a phone with no serious research and money is not a constrained go for the latest iPhone and if you want an Android phone then first thing to remember is never try to get a semy, they bring headache with them. They are sluggish, they will hang, occasionally they will restart; sometime in the middle of calls. Less internal storage memory is another concern for Android devices because many applications get installed in phone's storage. Internal storage capacity of an Android phone should be more than 1Gb otherwise you'll keep running out of space every time you install a new app. Many important apps like Adobe Flash take more than 10MB of internal storage.
Try to get a mobile with stock Android e.g. Nexus One, Nexus S, Dell XCD35, Motorola Milestone. Phones having stock Android are faster than others which have some 3rd party UI layer on top of Android e.g. Motoblur, HTC Sense. If you want to buy a phone with one of the 3rd party layers then try to get a phone with very high config. Phones having stock Android likely to get the future updates first then the others will follow because 3rd party UI needs an upgrade too with respect to the new Android update and that takes time.
A physical keyboard is always better because when you use on-screen keyboard the whole screen gets covered by the keyboard + the text input area which gets uncomfortable some times e.g in chatting you'll have to rotate your phone again and again to see what other person just said.
One can also look at Windows 7 based phones but I am confident that he'll soon come running to Android or iPhone.
