It may seem sort of trivial but I’m changing to a new brand of mobile phone. To me it feels like a big deal. But then, I’ve always liked computers, and the one I carry around in my pocket is very special to me. It has to be good. Really good. And it has to be reliable. For those reasons, I’ve been a faithful fan of the Samsung Galaxy range since it started. But, this time, instead of the Galaxy Note 5 I had planned to get when my current contract ended, tomorrow, I’ll be picking up a Huawei Nexus 6P.

I know there’s a certain nerdy cache to owning a Nexus, but that’s not the reason I’m switching. (Well, maybe it’s a teensy, tiny part of the reason.) There are, in fact, three important reasons for the change.

The first is that the Galaxy range no longer represents the great value for money it once did. It seems to me that, over the past couple of models, Samsung has priced its Galaxy models out of the “good value” bracket, into the “just as bad as Apple!’ range. Everyone knows that iPhones are grossly overpriced but Samsung seems to have only recently twigged to the idea that gullible users will pay through the nose for “must have,” stylish, “market leader” products, even when the technology is not that special. Well, it seems to me that the Nexus 6P has a very similar spec to the Galaxy Note 5 for just 3/4 of the price. So it’s a no-brainer, really.

The second reason is the screen. When I look at what I use a phone for – reading books, reading news, making notes and taking pictures, mainly – I find I really need a big screen. If I could fit a tablet in my pocket, I’d probably go for a flash, Android tablet, or maybe even the Kindle Fire. However, the major benefit of doing my reading and note-taking on a phone, is that it is always with me. Always. Now, the Nexus 6P has a beautiful, high-resolution 5.7″ screen (just like the Galaxy Note 5), which makes it way better than most other phones that have screens up to 5.1″. (By the way, have you noticed that screens are measured in ancient units but the weight of a phone is given in proper, metric units? It’s weird. Maybe the screens are measured in America, where ancient units still linger, but the phones are weighed in a more modern country.)

The third reason may seem a little odd. It’s because the Nexus 6P has an FM radio receiver. In fact, almost all phones have an FM receiver in them only, in almost every case, this is made inoperative by the network or the manufacturer. You won’t get FM radio on a Galaxy phone in this country, nor on an iPhone. You can understand why. If you want to listen to the radio (as I do) it is far better, from the network’s point of view, if you use Internet radio and consume bandwidth that you have to pay for (44Mb per hour for Android phones), than that you simply listen to free-to-air broadcasts. And it probably wouldn’t be that big a deal for me, except that the only two channels I listen to (ABC Radio National and ABC Classic FM) are time-shifted during the Australian Summer because they are, effectively, the Sydney broadcast digitised. I live in Queensland, which has no Daylight Saving and which often seems a million miles from Sydney and its concerns. And I like to listen to the radio when I’m outside working on my property, often hundreds of metres outside of wi-fi range.

Call me a fool for choosing a Chinese company over a South Korean one (but all you Apple fanbois out there need to acknowledge that your own phone was made in a Chinese factory). Tomorrow I will know whether I made a dreadful mistake that I’ll regret for the next two years. So, wish me luck.

Choosing a phone is such an important decision these days. My phone is an informational Swiss Army knife. It does so many different things. It’s the book I’m reading, my entire library, my online book shops, my news feeds, my jotter and scrap-book, my music collection, my still and video cameras, my map and guide, my web-browser, my dictionary, my star charts, my radio, my torch and my night-light, my clock, my alarm clock, my stopwatch, my calculator, my bank, and a hundred other vital tools. And yes, sometimes I use it to make phone calls and send messages but, honestly, even if it didn’t make calls, I’d still carry it with me everywhere.