This Father's Day, make sure your dad is equipped for his next great adventure by upgrading his tech with a new phone. Let's take a look at the features the guys in our lives love best.
The outdoor dad
If your father - or indeed, your uncle, grandfather or close family friend who's like a dad to you - loves the outdoors, you'll want to look for a phone that's resilient and can take a few knocks.
Choose a device with a water and dust resistance rating of at least IP67, and preferably IP68. Find exactly what they mean here (and while you're at it, learn how to fix a phone that's had an unintended swim!), but basically phones with these ratings won't mind a few accidental splashes out and about on a guys' fishing weekend.
You'll also want to take note of what material the screen is made of - look for Gorilla Glass which is a toughened glass designed to be thin, light and resistant to scratches and damage. Gorilla Glass last year brought out its fifth generation glass, but all versions offer some resistance to ill-treatment.
The city slicker dad
If your dad prefers a flat white at the latest coffee bar in town to a coffee by the campfire, you'll want to consider the style and design of the device you choose for him. You can't go wrong with a Samsung - there's a reason their smartphones are top sellers all over the world. But stylish dads will appreciate something a little difference, like a sleek LG or Sony cellphone.
The gamer dad
This guy doesn't even want to go out for coffee - he just loves hardcore gaming. He'll want a phone that's fast, with a large screen for great graphics.
When running games, you need to consider processor speed. It's measured in megahertz or gigahertz, and the bigger the number, generally the faster the phone. It's the brain of the smartphone, and the number measures how many instructions the device can handle per second. 1GHz means it can cope with a whopping billion instructions per second!
Next, look how many cores the phone has - usually either quad-core or octa-core. The more cores, the more processing units, and the more speed. Lastly, check out the RAM - this is what allows the phone to truly multitask.
Screens have been getting bigger and clearer in the past few years. A gamer wants a large screen to enjoy the incredible graphics games now have - any device over 5.5-inches is considered a phablet - and fab for gamers!
The papa-razzi
The papa-razzi loves to snap away and take hundreds of photos of his family, so he'll love a great camera. Smartphone tech has come on so much in recent years that your cellphone is all you need to capture magical family moments. You should consider megapixels - anything over 13MP should do the job, as well as other features like optical image stabilisation, digital zoom and a wide aperture. Aperture is the f-stop number (f/1.7, for example). The lower the number, the larger the aperture and that means more light is let in for better quality photos. It also allows you to have a blurred background effect.
Get the tech
Now you know just what to look out for, check out the Father's Day deals on Vodacom Online and save on some awesome devices.
