what is Smartphone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

The HTC Desire Z, featuring common smartphone capabilities such as a high-resolution touchable display, as well as a fairly common QWERTY slider keyboard.

A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone.^[1] Smartphones and feature phones may be thought of as handheld computers integrated with a mobile telephone, but while most feature phones are able to run applications based on platforms such as Java ME,^[2] a smartphone usually allows the user to install and run more advanced applications. Smartphones run complete operating system software providing a platform for application developers.^[3] Thus, they combine the functions of a camera phone and a Personal digital assistant (PDA).
Some smartphones, sometimes called NirvanaPhones,^[4] have a docking station with an external display and keyboard to create a desktop or laptop environment.
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, over 45.5 million people in the United States owned smartphones in 2010 out of 234 million total subscribers.^[6] Despite the large increase in smartphone sales in the last few years, smartphone shipments only make up 20% of total handset shipments, as of the first half of 2010.^[7] In March 2011 Berg Insight reported data that showed global smartphone shipments increased 74% from 2009 to 2010.^[8]