[haesslich]

Originally Posted by SteveHoward999

I have to say that by my definition, RAZR etc are smart phones. Provided, that is, you are talking lowercase smart phone, rather than Smartphone :-)

It is almost impossibe to find a phone that doesn't have most of the following features:-

camera
email
calendar
sync with PC features
web browser
feature expansion via Java or Flash
music player
video player

Flash and Java have the ability to give the phone applications that can do almost anything.

These add up to a smart phone. In other words, the vast majority of new phones acquired in the last two years are 'smart'.

I don't doubt for a second that lots of people are now used to downloading ringtones, pictures and video. Downloading and installing applications is a less common thing, but it would be wrong to imagine tha tis not a growing market.

I strongly believe Apple are marketing the iPhone at consumers who like the canned device model - a device that switches on and works. It will come with plenty of software and toys to keep the majority of users happy, but over the next couple of years the more adventurous users will demand more expandability. Then the iPhone will be forced to evolve into something that can challenge Symbian and Windows Mobile for versatility and expandability.

I wouldn't call the a smart phone - smart phones, at least from the old definition I'm used to, allow you to run and install productivity applications which don't need Java to operate: my s60 phone, for example, can run OggPlayer and a photo editing suite, although the latter takes up a LOT of system RAM and I don't really use it.

Applications have been a bit of a non-starter since the Java/BREW platforms were deployed 3 years ago mostly because of two things, from what I can tell: expense of program, and limited utility of said programs. Most of the 'applications' I see are either games, or else things like movie listings or similar which don't do all that much. AIM and other programs for instant messaging have to be already part of the ROM, and can't be added like they can in Windows Mobile or Palm devices... which means that if your phone doesn't come with that type of client built in, you're not going to be able to use it. Plus, the data charges on TOP of the purchase prices for those limited-purpose applications tends to be a bit of a drag on widespread usage of them.

Or, to put it another way, how many people do you know who download more than one or two free games onto their phone, or are willing to pay to do so? Yes, they're available, but how many people really do it, compared to those who are happy to drag out a GBA, DS, or PSP and then play those while on the go?

I do agree that the iPhone is directed towards people who want a limited, but simple to use, device; I'm one of those people, in all likelihood; my PDA takes over most of the functions that the 'smart' phone would do.. and it's easier to use than Windows Mobile SP because of the touchscreen and more powerful processor. PLUS it means that I don't kill my phone's charge handling PDA-based activities, which is an important consideration most smartphone designers don't take into account: the more functions you have, and the more they're used, the greater the drain on the phone's battery... which means no calls can be made if it's out of juice - negating the phone's utility.

This MAY drive a development of the iPhone towards more 'open' application development, but it may also set things up so that Apple will start selling widgets directly to consumers or allow others to create Widgets which will run on the iPhone, which would increase its utility while avoiding the so-called security issues that the closed OS is supposed to protect carriers from. Heck, Cingular and others may start selling Weather and Traffic widgets of their own, designed to interface with their own networks... and this may well succeed better than the Java-based applications they've been trying to sell to date.

One more problem with Java-based apps: a lot of phones have different specifications, hardware-wise, which makes deployment a PITA when it comes to programs. Smartphones have one advantage in that they tend to have fairly standard requirements to run the OS the phone uses in the first place, which makes programs a little easier to code for them (and Palm and MS along with Nokia make their SDK's available, which eases the development process a bit) and the environments are a lot more homogenous than they'd otherwise be.. so you don't have to worry about whether you've got X or Y feature on the phone; it just has to have Windows Mobile 5 and 32MB of RAM (a minimum for WM Smartphone, it seems) and you're good.