
Show HN: BestChoice – Phone-chooser that even your grandma can use - arnaudsm
https://bestchoice.io/
======
gvb
My grandma (age 80++) wants:

* A flip phone:

\- People that are no longer very dexterous have a hard time with touch screen
phones

\- It's a phone - she will only be using it as a phone; all the touch screen
features are just confusing

* An "SOS" button that texts / dials a list of family numbers for help if she has an emergency that doesn't warrant calling 911. Having dedicated memory dial keys is a passable compromise.

I ended up buying a Voca V530. I bought it just last week, so it is too soon
to call it an unqualified success, but it looks like it will do the job we
want it to do.

~~~
arnaudsm
You're right ! I didn't include Flip Phones because they lack diversity and
are pretty inexpensive. And people that buy flip phones usually don't search
on the Internet websites like mine.

~~~
bradknowles
No, but people like that frequently depend on people like us who might visit
such a site, and so therefore there is a big "friends and family" potential
market that you are missing.

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arnaudsm
Choosing a phone has become too complicated in 2018, so I wanted to create
something simple and objective to find the right device. No marketing gimmicks
nor biased reviews. Just features and benchmarks, for real people.

Hope you'll enjoy it, would love your thoughts!

Here's the HN thread that gave me the idea :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14561498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14561498)

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wanda
This is a very minor point, but I just happened to be checking your site on a
laptop with a 1366x768 screen. At this resolution, the "easy to use" button
actually doesn't display the word "use" [0].

In the materialize.css file you're using, the _xl_ breakpoint for the grid
system begins at _min-width: 1201px_ , and there doesn't seem to be a
consideration for higher resolutions than that.

If you wanted to fix this, since 1366x768 is a fairly common resolution on
things like Chromebooks and older laptops (i.e. the computers your target
market is somewhat likely to be using) you could just remove the _xl2_ CSS
classes from the divs containing each of the buttons. This would display the
buttons in three columns even on higher resolutions, enabling users to see the
full button text.

That might look pretty mad on bigger screens though; you could also change
"easy to use" to "simple" and that would probably also solve the problem — but
that'd be cheating.

Personally, I'd add in my own _xxl_ media query for higher resolution screens.
Working with materialize.css's existing media queries, it would look something
like this [1].

After adding that media query to the CSS file (after the others or it won't
work), I'd then change the _xl2_ CSS classes to _xxl2_ , leaving _m4_ , so
that it would display the buttons in three columns unless a high enough
resolution is used that can display all the button text in six columns.

(Obviously, you could also use flexbox and it would solve the aforementioned
issue as well, but I guess if there's a demographic that is likely to be using
a browser that doesn't support flexbox, it's the elderly.)

[0]: [https://i.imgur.com/uJJKHvz.png](https://i.imgur.com/uJJKHvz.png)

[1]:
[https://paste.sh/Axgmkd20#Q8zs4FfhQ_pbxrAzfUfSK9h8](https://paste.sh/Axgmkd20#Q8zs4FfhQ_pbxrAzfUfSK9h8)

\-------

Besides that, cool site. I have a question though: are you adding each device
manually to your own database, or will you be getting the data from somewhere
in the future?

I ask because I find it difficult to believe that I cannot purchase an iPhone
SE in the UK, for instance.

~~~
arnaudsm
Thank you so much for the code ! I'm still new to Web Design, it's a big
mistake for a lot of users indeed.

I'm getting the data legally from fonoapi.freshpixl.com , but the Speed and
Camera Scores are calculated with some Python wizardry. There's still a few
prices missing, I'm adding the iPhone SE UK right now !

~~~
wanda
No problem, it's a cool project and I wish you the best of luck going forward.

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Micoloth
It looks very good. Things I noticed based on "even your granma can use it"
(i'm using it on an iphone):

-there is a white "phones" word overlapped to everything on the top of the page, it should be fixed

-it's already been said inthink but long labels that don't fit in buttons are not displayed or only partially displayed

-even i don't get the logic of the first 4 buttons, i know my grandma would not find it intuitive: why the first 3 can be on simultaneously, but "best price" switches everything off? What's the deal there?

-I tried the drag price range thingie expecting it to be bad on a phone, and i was truly amazed by how smooth it is and the range->a to b range->single price transition. This being said, there is no reason why when a single price is selected, you are not able to move it around. You should check it up.. But you almost did it xD

Hope i'm helping

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jclos
A very important thing you forgot and that a lot of people tend to not think
about until it bites them in the ass are the available bands. Some of those
Xiaomi phones for instance are amazing and cheap and intuitive, but that's not
going to help you if it only works with a small subset of the bands used in
your country and therefore you get a garbage signal everywhere.

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harias
I think speed and camera should be more intuitive. Speed doesn't actually make
much sense, it could be divided into classes like social media, gaming etc.
And what about phones not rated by Dxomark (assuming you have used their
scores). Also, do you have your own rating framework for ease-of-use?

~~~
arnaudsm
You're right, it's possible to distinguish media and gaming performance (ie
with basemark OS and basemark X) but I want to keep things simple for the
average user.

And yes I've extrapolated the camera Scores with my own rating framework based
in ISO, exposure, noise, etc. All processing is done in Python!

~~~
bradknowles
If you're going to use speed as a distinguishing factor, you should be more
clear on the site as to where that value is coming from. And you should be
willing to expose the underlying data for those of us who might care.

Which benchmark(s) you use to judge the relative speed of one device against
another one is actually quite important.

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jrrrr
Is this open source? I'd be interested in seeing the implementation.

Other information to surface could include whether the device is on the latest
OS, whether it gets timely updates, and whether it's available unlocked or
only from carriers.

Do you have Sony devices in there?

~~~
arnaudsm
It's not Open Source yet, the codebase is still too messy. Good old
PHP/SQL/Jquery Stack and parsing is done in Python.

Thanks for the tips, I'm working on career selection features! Also the OS and
updates are mentioned in the descriptions. You can even select brands with
good Update support in the "More Features" menu.

There are a few Sony devices, you can select them in >more
features>Brands>Sony. I'm still adding more devices !

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O_H_E
Awesome interface

I wish we could have something like this for laptops.

Maybe when you cleanup the code and open source it, someone (maybe I) could
clone it and implement one for laptops

~~~
arnaudsm
That'd be incredibly useful.

Even though it's hard to repertory all variations of each laptop (10 on
average), it's the next item on my todo-list. Thanks for the proposition !

~~~
jclos
You might want to get in touch with notebookcheck.net, they have the exact
data you would need for that. I don't think they'll give it to you, but who
knows, if you impress them enough with the phone chooser you might be able to
strike a collaboration.

~~~
O_H_E
That could potentially end up with a very useful product.

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ryanthedev
Awesome website! I love it. My girlfriend loves. Should get a YouTube guy to
review it for you. Get some good traffic. Keep up on it and always improve!

~~~
ryanthedev
A cool feature would be compare. Just make sure the ux is simple. Always hate
pain in the ass compare features.

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biounit
How about voice quality? It's a phone!!!

~~~
arnaudsm
Voice quality is pretty much always the same on gsm networks.. I did not find
any metrics on the subject.

~~~
bradknowles
Depends on the codecs that are used, and the bands available. Some devices
might not have more recent codecs, and therefore might sound worse.

Other devices might have newer "HD voice" codecs available, and could sound
totally different.

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samhunta
Please add the OnePlus brand :)

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arnaudsm
You can select it in More features>Brands>OnePlus ;)

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anotheryou
no moto g?

~~~
arnaudsm
Phones appear according to availability in your country, I'm adding more
links!

