Early Years: Main Article: Mobile Operating System
Early Years: Main Article: Mobile Operating System
Early Years: Main Article: Mobile Operating System
smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary basic 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]
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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6]
Early years
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 touchscreen to select telephone 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 highly 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 costly personal digital assistant (PDA) byHewlett 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 9500Communicator 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 costly phone model sold by a major
brand for almost the full life of the model series, costing easily 20% and sometimes 40% more than the next most expensive smartphone by any major
producer.
In 1997 Ericsson released the concept phone GS88,[8][9] the first device labelled as 'smartphone'.[10]
Rise of Symbian and BlackBerry
In 2000 Ericsson released the touchscreen smartphone R380, the first device to use the new Symbian OS.[11] It was followed up by P800 in 2002, the first
camera smartphone.[12]
In 2001 Microsoft announced its Windows CE Pocket PC OS would be offered as "Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphone 2002."[13]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.[14]
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.[15]
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.
In 2010 Nokia released the Nokia N8 smartphone, the first device to use the new Symbian^3 OS.[16] It featured a camera that Mobile Burn described as the
best camera in a phone[17], and satellite navigation that Mobile Choice described as the best on any phone.[18]