Features South Africans want most in a smartphone

Battery life, storage, and Internet connectivity are among South Africans’ most important feature considerations when buying a new smartphone, with camera specs and performance being less critical.

This is according to surveys conducted by Adoozy Lifestyle and Geopoll. Both highlighted battery life as a high-priority consideration for smartphone buyers.

This shows that battery life has been an important consideration for several years, given that Andoozy Lifestyle conducted its survey in mid-2024, and Geopoll’s data comes from February 2020.

Adoozy Lifestyle’s survey was completed predominantly by South Africans aged between 18 and 35, many of whom highlighted running out of power as one of their biggest challenges.

Its data showed that 52.8% of respondents said they ran out of mobile phone battery power once a day, while 29.2% said they had to plug their phones in to charge at least twice a day.

Geopoll’s study was conducted with 400 South African respondents, split evenly between male and female participants. It also notes that the 18 to 24, 25 to 34, and 45+ age ranges had a 33-33-34 split.

“Respondents were roughly nationally representative across the nine provinces in South Africa,” it added.

29% of respondents said storage space was the most important factor they considered when buying a new phone. 21% said a long-lasting battery is critical to their buying decisions.

Sufficient memory and a powerful camera system tied third, with 14% voting for these features as a priority.

However, while these are the primary factors that drive smartphone buying decisions, this assumes that smartphones are powerful enough to run popular social media apps, ride-hailing apps, and mobile banking.

Nearly half of Adoozy Lifestyle’s respondents said they use their smartphones mainly for banking, sending money, and processing similar transactions. In contrast, 23.6% said they mostly use their devices for ride-hailing purposes.

Regarding communication, 55% of respondents said they favoured instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram, while 22.5% preferred direct messaging through platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

Only 21.3% said they prefer phone calls.

Geopoll’s responses on communication preferences provided similar results, with 58% of participants favouring WhatsApp and 30% preferring Facebook Messenger to communicate with friends and loved ones.

Telegram and Skype were also listed as top messaging apps, both of which received votes from 5% of respondents.

Geopoll also broke down time spent on smartphones into various functionalities, and its data shows that respondents spend more time browsing the Internet than using other smartphone features.

“The Internet is so important that 99% of respondents classify Internet connectivity as a must-have part of a mobile phone, and 70% access the Internet mostly through a smartphone or tablet compared to just 10% who browse the internet mostly on computers,” it said.

“This confirms that for website owners and developers in South Africa, mobile must be a priority.”

45% of respondents said they browse the Internet on their phone for more than four hours a day.

“Of applications, time is most spent on messaging apps — 40% spent 4+ hours daily on messaging apps, followed by social media apps — 36% use social media apps 4+ hours daily,” said Geopoll.

“Females spend more time on both messaging apps and social media apps.”

Geopoll’s breakdown of smartphone usage time by functionality is shown in the chart below.