A smartphone is basically a mobile phone with numerous additional features that extend its functionality. A smartphone provides all of the functions of a standard cell phone. In addition, a smartphone supports e-mail and Web browsing capabilities as well as word processing, office productivity and collaboration applications. Smartphones typically come equipped with a full-featured QWERTY keyboard as well as touch-screen and voice-activated controls to enable easy data input. Most smartphones can also incorporate relatively high-resolution cameras, video recording capabilities and robust audio playback functions.
Technically speaking, the first smartphone was released by IBM in 1992 and was called the Simon. It was the first mobile phone to feature support for capabilities such as e-mail, calendaring and word processing. However, it wasn’t until Ericsson released its R380 model in 2000 that the term smartphone was first used to describe a mobile phone with extended capabilities. Since then, the term is broadly applied to a range of mobile communication devices including PDAs such as the Blackberry and the Palm.
Compared to the early days, most mobile phones in the market these days are, in a sense, smartphones. Most modern mobile devices support at least rudimentary Web browsing capabilities, full-featured browsers, text messaging functions and are also capable of sending and receiving data and pictures. Higher-end, full-featured smartphones meanwhile, typically have all of the functions of a low-end personal computer packed into a much smaller form factor. Some devices such as Apple’s iPhone 3GS for business for instance include as much as 16 gigabytes of storage, which is more than what desktop computers used to offer a few years ago.
Smartphones have their own operating systems and are capable of hosting mobile versions of applications that typically run on standard desktop and notebook computers. The most popular smartphone operating systems include Symbian, the Blackberry OS, iPhone and Windows Mobile. In addition to these established vendors, Google recently entered the smartphone market with the release of its Google Android mobile platform.
From a functionality standpoint, high-end smartphones allow users to perform most of same tasks that they would be able to perform on a full-featured PC. Many companies these days routinely equip their employees with smartphones in order to enable them to access office applications while on the road or while working out of remote offices. Smartphones can typically be synced with Windows or Macintosh computers. This allows data from the computer to be easily transferred to the smartphone or vice versa. This capability is extremely useful for backing-up data from a smartphone or for downloading data such as e-mail contact lists and phone books from a desktop or laptop computer.
Almost all major manufacturers of mobile devices today offer smartphone technologies. However, subscribers typically need to purchase a specific mobile plan in order to be able to take advantage of smartphone functionality. Mobile phone providers usually offer e-mail, Web browsing and other smartphone functions as separately priced options on top of whatever basic voice plans they may be offering. The subscription rates charged by service providers for a mobile plan for smartphones can vary substantially, so it pays to shop around if you want to find cheap mobile plans.