Smartphone

Share of 2010 Q2 smartphone sales to end users by operating system, according to Gartner.^[1]

A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary basic 'feature phone'.^[2] Smartphones and feature phones may be thought of as handheld computers integrated within a mobile telephone, but while most feature phones are able to run applications based on platforms such as Java ME or BREW,^[3] a smartphone allows the user to install and run more advanced applications based on a specific platform. Smartphones run complete operating system software providing a platform for application developers.^[4]

Growth in demand for advanced mobile devices boasting powerful processors, abundant memory, larger screens and open operating systems has outpaced the rest of the mobile phone market for several years.^[5] According to a study by ComScore, in 2010 over 45.5 million people in the United States owned smartphones and it is the fastest growing segment of the mobile phone market, which comprised 234 million subscribers in the United States.^[6]

History

The first smartphone was called Simon; it was designed by IBM in 1992 and shown as a concept product^[7] that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth. Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touch-screen to select phone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus. Text was entered with a unique on-screen "predictive" keyboard. By today's standards, the Simon would be a fairly low-end product; however, its feature set at the time was incredibly advanced.

The Nokia Communicator line was the first of Nokia's smartphones starting with the Nokia 9000, released in 1996. This distinctive palmtop computer style smartphone was the result of a collaborative effort of an early successful and expensive Personal digital assistant (PDA) by Hewlett Packard combined with Nokia's bestselling phone around that time, and early prototype models had the two devices fixed via a hinge. The Nokia 9210 was the first color screen Communicator model which was the first true smartphone with an open operating system; the 9500 Communicator was also Nokia's first cameraphone Communicator and Nokia's first WiFi phone. The 9300 Communicator was the third dimensional shift into a smaller form factor, and the latest E90 Communicator includes GPS. The Nokia Communicator model is remarkable for also having been the most expensive phone model sold by a major brand for almost the full lifespan of the model series, easily 20% and sometimes 40% more expensive than the next most expensive smartphone by any major manufacturer.

The concept phone GS88, released in 1997, was the first of Ericsson's smartphones.^[8][9] The GS88 was followed up by the touch screen smartphone R380 in 2000, the first device to use the new Symbian OS,^[10] and by the P800 in 2002, the first camera smartphone.^[11]

In 2001 Microsoft announced its Windows CE Pocket PC OS would be offered as "Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphone 2002."^[12] Microsoft originally defined its Windows Smartphone products as lacking a touchscreen and offering a lower screen resolution compared to its sibling Pocket PC devices.

In early 2002 Handspring released the Palm OS Treo smartphone, utilizing a full keyboard that combined wireless web browsing, email, calendar, and contact organizer with mobile third-party applications that could be downloaded or synced with a computer.^[13]

In 2002 RIM released the first BlackBerry which was the first smartphone optimized for wireless email use and had achieved a total customer base of 32 million subscribers by December 2009.^[14]

In 2007 Nokia launched the Nokia N95 which integrated a wide range of features into a consumer-oriented smartphone: GPS, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash, 3G and wi-fi connectivity and TV-out. In the next few years these features would become standard on high-end smartphones.

Later in the same year, Apple Inc. introduced its first iPhone. It was initially expensive, costing $500. It was one of the first smartphones to be mainly controlled through its touchscreen, the others being the LG Prada and the HTC Touch (also released in 2007). It was the first mobile phone to use a multi-touch interface. It featured a web browser that was much better than its competitors - Arstechnica described it as "far superior to anything that we had ever used prior."^[15] At the time of the launch of the iPhone it was arguable whether it was actually a smartphone as the first generation lacked the ability to officially use third-party applications.^[16] A process called jailbreaking emerged quickly to provide unofficial third-party applications. The first iPhone didn't have 3G support due to the lack of 3G network coverage in the United States at the time.

Android, a cross platform OS for smartphones was released in 2008. Android is an Open Source platform backed by Google, along with major hardware and software developers (such as Intel, HTC, ARM, Motorola and eBay, to name a few), that form the Open Handset Alliance.^[17]

The first phone to use the Android OS was the HTC Dream, branded for distribution by T-Mobile as the G1.^[18] The software suite included on the phone consists of integration with Google's proprietary applications, such as Maps, Calendar, and Gmail, as well as Google's Chrome Lite full HTML web browser.^[19] Third-party apps are available via the Android Market, including both free and paid apps.^[20]

In July 2008 Apple introduced its second generation iPhone which had a lower upfront price and 3G support. It also created the App Store with both free and paid applications. The App Store can deliver smartphone applications developed by third parties directly to the iPhone or iPod Touch over wifi or cellular network without using a PC to download. The App Store has been a huge success for Apple and by April 2010 hosted more than 185,000 applications.^[21] The App Store hit three billion application downloads in early January 2010.^[22]

Other platforms are able to download apps from any website, rather than only from a single app store; however, other companies have more recently lauched their own app stores. RIM launched its app store, BlackBerry App World, in April 2009. Nokia launched its Ovi Store in May 2009. Palm launched its Palm App Catalog in June 2009. Microsoft launched its Windows Marketplace for Mobile in October 2009.

In January 2010, Google launched Nexus One using its Android OS. Although Android OS has multi-touch capabilities, Google initially removed that feature from Nexus One,^[23] but it was added through a firmware update on February 2, 2010.^[24]

Operating systems

Operating systems that can be found on smartphones include Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS, Symbian OS (including S60 series), webOS (in Palm) and Windows Mobile.

Android among others is built on top of Linux, and the iOS is derived from the BSD and NeXTSTEP operating systems, which all are related to Unix.

Smartbook

A smartbook is a concept of a mobile device that falls between smartphones and netbooks, delivering features typically found in smartphones (always on, all-day battery life, 3G connectivity, GPS)^[25] in a slightly larger device with a full keyboard. Smartbooks will tend to be designed to work with online applications.^[26]

Smartbooks use the ARM processor, which gives them much greater battery life than a netbook which uses a traditional Intel x86 processor.^[27] They are likely to be sold initially through mobile network operators, like mobile phones are today, along with a wireless data plan.^[28]

Open source development

The open source culture has penetrated the smartphone market in a way. There have been attempts to open source both hardware and software of a smartphone. Most notable project from open hardware development is most likely the Neo FreeRunner smartphone developed by Openmoko. Lately, the Google Android OS is a popular open source mobile operating system. Nokia has an initiative around Symbian too, which has open-sourced all Symbian smartphone code in February 2010.^[29] In cooperation with Intel, Nokia also develops the open source MeeGo operating system.

See also

References

External links

• freesmartphone.org - a collaboration platform for open source smartphones
• Smart mobile phone emulator
• The Smartphone Genome Project
• Defining the Smartphone, part 1, part 2 by Steve Litchfield on July 16th 2010, various definitions are treated