What Makes a Smartphone a Smartphone?

[Pete Paxton]

<p>We have a large variety of devices out there now. With Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm, Nokia, the Iphone, and Google's G1, many would call these smartphones. But as I look around the web I've read that some say devices like the G1 or iphone are not smartphones. Some say they are multimedia phones. When I compare my Dash and my Iphone, there are definitely some differences but there are also many similarities. They both play music, videos, handle all my appointments, contacts, ebooks, bible, internet, email, camera, and so on. So what do you all think? Are all the devices mentioned smartphones? Are some smartphones and some not? Does it matter if the device has a touch screen or not? And of course the real question: What makes a smartphone a smartphone?Â*</p>

[TopDog]

For me a smartphone is a phone that is "smarter" than the regular old phones that just did voice and SMS.

It should be able to do multiple tasks simultaneously, and give the user added value than just communicating with family and friends. It should have the possibility to install third party applications.

Wither the smartphone has a touch screen or not doesn't matter. It's about the possibilities and added value, not the features.

So where does that leave us? Is a phone with a camera, web browser and a JVM a smartphone? To some extent, yes.

I think it's time to categorise smartphones. You have f.eks. multimedia-centric devices like the iPhone, business-centric devices like Windows Mobile and camera/leisure-centric devices like Nokia/SonyEricsson.

Then you have the powerful smartphones that does more than one area, like Windows Mobile that does both multimedia and business... but they are usually more focused to one area than the other.

[Hooch Tan]

The way I always interpreted it was sort of like the difference between a standard desktop PC and a workstation.

Specifically, a smartphone is a phone that includes PIM and other work related features. This means that it has the ability to sync with corporate network servers, be able to connect to a VPN, have policies applied to it. These options may not necessairily be used, but they have the capability.

This compared to a feature phone, that may include PIM functions, word processing, etc, but isn't quite as targeted towards the business environment.

If you look at Blackberries, WinMo and Palm devices, they are designed to be able to be managed in a corporate environment. Compare this to the iPhone or Nokia N95 or N96, which are more consumer-centric. Mind you, the iPhone is definately approaching the Smartphone category in my opinion, but it isn't quite there yet.

[Stinger]

Who was the first person to use the term "smartphone"? The earliest reference I can find is from the early days of Symbian. Microsoft then seems to have picked up the ball and used it for its Smartphone (capital S) platform. Whatever the origin, it's nothing more than a marketing term. Hence the endless arguments.

There also seems to be a divide between what the phrase smartphone means in North America and the rest of the world.

North America grew accustomed to the term smartphone at a time when Palm and Windows Mobile dominated. The phrase has since conjured up an imagine of a business-centric QWERTY device for most Americans.

The rest of the world hasn't been exposed to Palm and (to a lesser extent) Windows Mobile. Around the world, Symbian has tended to dominate and most Symbian devices are consumer and multimedia-centric. The obsession with QWERTY keyboards and push e-mail hasn't filtered through to the parts of the world that have grown up on T9 and SMS.

For me, as a European, my definition of a smartphone is a phone that can run natively coded third party applications. That includes Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Mobile OS X and Android (sort of). I like the definition because it's very straight-forward and clear cut. Where my personal definition falls down is that Blackberry phones (to the best of my knowledge) can only run Java applications. Is a Blackberry a smartphone? RIM's platform seems to get more sophisticated with every passing day but it's still behind the rest.

[JesterMania]

That's really the first time I have heard of the term "multimedia phone". I think it's mainly used by those who think carrying a "Smartphone" sounds too geek :rolleyes:. Apart from that, I think the original definition of a smartphone was a handset that had more features than voice calls and SMS (i.e. includes PIM features such as calendar, To-do list, etc.). However, literally every phone can do this now (my Moto SLVR for example) and to make matters more complicated - most phones can install at least J2ME apps (Java midlets) enhancing functionality further with 3rd-party apps.

To wrap things up, when I hear the term "Smartphone", a few criteria come to mind:

- Phone has PIM functionality
- Phone can install custom applications
- Phone has hardware features beyond a "normal" phone such as GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth

[ARW]

First off a smartphone is capable of much more than just making calls. Adding apps, email, web browsing, contacts, calendar etc. I like to make the distinction that a smartphone is a one handed device. Could be touchscreen or not, qwerty or not, but it has to be a one handed device. So...many WM Pro phones are not smartphones because they require two hands, as does the iPhone. by my definition a phone only requires one hand to operate.

That said, I'm not sure what all the two-handed mobile phones should be called. They're nice and everything, but they're not smartphones. I'll stick with my Smartphone and when I need a bigger screen I'll pull my 2.5 pound PC out and have a true computing experience with enough screen real estate to really get some work done.

My .02, which is now worth about .01 according to my latest calculation.

AW

[Fritzly]

First off a smartphone is capable of much more than just making calls. Adding apps, email, web browsing, contacts, calendar etc. I like to make the distinction that a smartphone is a one handed device.
AW

Smartphone is a phone that has added functionalities; in the late 80s, early 90s phone were only able to make... phone calls, not even SMS.

Basically every phone available today is a smartphone.

I also do not see why a smartphone must be a "one handed device; this seems an arbitrary distinction, like the "multimedia phone" one. Well, let marketing geniuses justify their paychecks.

[acharn]

I think of it like this. A "smartphone" is any device that you use that has more data features than voice features. However, I never rely solely on the description of "Smartphone". I think in most circles it means any device that has PIM features a "dumbphone", i.e. your circa 2002 cell phone, doesn't have.
I don't consider my iPhone a smartphone, since I don't want to "dumb it down". It is, in my opinion, much more advanced than a "smartphone".

[Damion Chaplin]

A smartphone is, quite simply, a phone that's 'smarter' than a regular phone.

What the manufacturers seem to have forgotten is this: In order for your phone to remain a 'smart'phone, the features that it offers must continuously be more than the features offered in average phones (like the RAZR).

Unfortunately, the manufacturers (MS in particular) think that once they've developed a smartphone, they don't think it needs to do much more later in time. It used to be the end-all be-all of a phone that it could play MP3s, but these days GPS units play MP3s, so that's nothing special. What has MS done? Decided that Windows Media Player Mobile didn't really need anything else beyond displaying album art...

I believe that eventually there really won't be any difference between 'smart' and 'dumb' phones. The iPhone is a significant step in that direction. Eventually, I believe the distinction will be moot.

That said, there's one feature that stands out for me: A smartphone must multi-task. I want to listen to music and surf the web at the same time. I want them both to be temporarily suspended when I receive a phone call. Then when the call is over, I want the music to resume and my web page to come back up. I also don't want to have to close Pocket Excel in order to pull up the calculator! That, I think, is what really makes a smartphone 'smart'. Until you multi-task, you're not a smartphone.

[ucfgrad93]

I would say a key feature/requirement of a smartphone is the ability to add programs to it.

[Rocco Augusto]

I personally feel that for a phone to be considered a 'smartphone' there are a key set of features that the device needs out of the box.



For starters, it has to be able to manage all of your PIM information without the use of third party software.
Email of some kind - push or pull (nowadays, I say push)
It has to have a decent web browser.
You have to be able to install and remove applications to the device that are not Java applets.

The iPhone was arguably not a smartphone until Apple allowed third party developers to create applications on the platform. Now the big argument I hear is because those applications cannot run in the background, they shouldn't count. Google Android however is a smartphone platform that covers all of the above requirements.

[Dyvim]

Where my personal definition falls down is that Blackberry phones (to the best of my knowledge) can only run Java applications.
You have to be able to install and remove applications to the device that are not Java applets.
The Android SDK only allows applications to be written in Java. So is the G1 also not a smartphone? (Ok maybe they're more than just midlets but it's still kind of lame that Android SDK uses Java.)

Anyway, the terminology is all just marketing mumbo-jumbo IMO. Once the majority of phones sold are "smart" by the consensus of today's definition (which is surely different than the 2002 definition when MS introduced their official Smartphone platform), they'll come up with some other term to classify phones and try to drive sales of higher end devices. Genius phones? (Apple probably already has that term trademarked.)

[Stinger]

The Android SDK only allows applications to be written in Java. So is the G1 also not a smartphone? (Ok maybe they're more than just midlets but it's still kind of lame that Android SDK uses Java.)

Android is an interesting topic. Native APIs can can called from the Java applications via System.loadLibrary but the applications are still only compiled into bytecode.

Anyway, the terminology is all just marketing mumbo-jumbo IMO. Once the majority of phones sold are "smart" by the consensus of today's definition (which is surely different than the 2002 definition when MS introduced their official Smartphone platform)

That's why I like my definition (a phone capable of running natively coded third party applications). It's as applicable today as it was 6-7 years ago. :)

[virain]

I should say that a label "Smartphone" is pretty much over used these days. Any phone that can do a little more than make a call, SMS, and take a picture is labeled "smartphone". I would say it is time to move beyond that common terminology and give more appropriate classification for devices in mobile phone market.
I would say it could be:
- Media devices (iPhone, G1, Nokia's and Sony Ericsson (I consider nice camera a part of media experience)
- Business Communicators (Blackberry type devices)
- Multi-tasking devices (if someone can help me with better term) s.a. WM phones and some devices from Nokia E90 and SonyEricsson P series (P900, P1, etc.)
That would really clarify the situation and help you to shop for the right device depending on what do you intend to use it for.

[Pony99CA]

To me, a "smart phone" is a phone with PDA features (or a PDA with phone features). Therefore, it has to have a rich set of PIM applications, meaning good Calendar and Contacts programs (and possibly Tasks and Notes applications). (If you require Notes, that may exclude Microsoft's original Smartphone platform as a "smart phone", though.) The applications also can't rely on an Internet connection to work; they have to work locally.

I would also require the ability to install programs. If the phone can't "learn" new tricks, how smart is it, really?

A smart phone certainly doesn't need any media applications (not even a camera), although they're certainly welcome. It may not even need E-mail or Web browsing, although those are quite welcome, too. It definitely doesn't need WiFi, GPS or an FM radio.

Steve

[Kirkaiya]

I think a lot of people have listed attributes of a smartphone, or definitions by list of "functions that it has".

A smartphone (in my opinion, anyway) is a mobile phone that runs a general purpose OS, rather than being hardwired to perform limited functions.

Obviously, running a general purpose OS (such as OS X, or WinMo, Palm OS, Android, or RIM's OS) almost always means that you add new functionality by installing new software. A lot of these OS's didn't start out as Phone OS's at all (in fact, none of them did - OS X is a port from Apple's Mac OS X, WinMo and Palm were created for PDAs, and Android is based on Linux). I don't know the provenance of RIM's OS, but it might be descended from their purely push-mail/pager device which couldn't make voice calls.

Symbian might be the only smartphone OS that was actually made for phones, and it seems to be on the way down, if not out.

So - dumb phones run closed, sealed, special-purpose operating systems that have limited (or no) ability to run applications that didn't come with it. A smartphone is essentially a pocket-computer with phone functions, running a general purpose OS that's likely derived from either a PDA OS or a desktop OS.

That's my 2 cents anyway! In other news - now that there are an estimated 100,000 iPhones in Thailand (gray market), Reuters is reporting (http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSBKK19265420081113) that True Move (a mobile carrier in Thailand) will be finally bringing it "legit" to Thai customers, most of whom don't give a rat's patoey about whether it's gray-market or not. (I also mentioned this in my blog, link in my sig line).

[Pony99CA]

So - dumb phones run closed, sealed, special-purpose operating systems that have limited (or no) ability to run applications that didn't come with it.
So what about phones like my old LG VX6000 or Motorola V710 which supported Verizon's GetItNow -- a store that allowed you to download BREW applications? Or what about similar phones that supported Java Micro Edition for applications? They likely ran special-purpose OSes but allowed a rich set of applications.

Where those phones failed to meet my definition was their limited PIM support.

Steve