I think your anecdata is right on the money! (Pun unintended, but now that it's there I'll take credit for it...) Yeah, when I said "everyone I know looks at

I think your anecdata is right on the money! (Pun unintended, but now that it's there I'll take credit for it...) Yeah, when I said "everyone I know looks at reviews" I meant "at least some of the time". :-) So my list of cellphone characteristics I didn't post - I was thinking of things like this: Size, shape, and weight. Battery technology and capacity - removable or not? Display technology, size and resolution. Resistive or capacitive touch? Stylus? Physical keyboard? Processor technology, how many cores, what instruction set, what GPU? Memory size? Storage size? External storage (SD)? Charger standard? External audio and digital ports? What kinds of sensors? Operating system and application software. What programming languages are used. How software is distributed. Who is allowed to write software. I don't think many of those are specified by a government agency. At least I hope they aren't!