A smart phone, often simply called a phone, is a mobile device that combines the functionality of a traditional mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multimedia playback and streaming. Smartphones have built-in cameras, GPS navigation, and support for various communication methods, including voice calls, text messaging, and internet- based messaging apps.
Smartphones have largely replaced personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, handheld/palm-sized PCs, portable media players (PMP)[1] point-and-shoot cameras, camcorders, and to a lesser extent, handheld video game consoles, reader devices, pocket calculators, and GPS tracking units.
Mobile operating system timeline
Early smartphones were marketed primarily towards the enterprise market, attempting to bridge the functionality of standalone PDA devices with support for cellular telephony, but were limited by their bulky form, short battery life, slow analog cellular networks, and the immaturity of wireless data services. These issues were eventually resolved with the exponential scaling and miniaturization of MOS transistors down to sub-micron levels (Moor’s law), (Edholm’s law), and more mature software platforms that allowed mobile device ecosystems to develop independently of data providers.
In the 2000s, NTT DoComo’s i-mode platform, BlackBerry, Nokia’s Symbian platform, and Windows Mobile began to gain market traction, with models often featuring QWERTY keyboards of resistive touchscreen input and emphasizing access to push email and wireless internet.
Forerunner IBM Simon
In the early 1990s, IBM engineer Frank Canova realised that chip-and-wireless technology was becoming small enough to use in handheld devices.
[5] The first commercially available device that could be properly referred to as a ‘smartphone’ began as a prototype called “Angler” developed by Canova in 1992 while at IBM and demonstrated in November of that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show.[6][7][8] A refined version was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator. In addition to placing and receiving cellular calls, the touchscreen-equippend Simon could send and receive faxes and emails. It included an address book, calendar, appointment scheduler, calculator, world time clock, and notepad, as well as other visionary mobile applications such as maps, stock reports and news.[9]
The term”smart phone” (in two words) was not coined until a year after a year after the introduction of the Simon, appearing in prints as early as 1995, describing AT&T’s phoneWriter Communicator.[14][none-primary source needed]
The term “smartphone” (as one word) was first used by Ericsson in 1997 to describe a new device concept, the GS88.[15]
operating system competition
The iPhone and later touchscreen-only Android device together popularized the slate form factor, based on a large capacitive touchscreen as the sole means of interaction, and led to the decline of earlier, keyboard-and keypad- focused platforms.[36] Later, navigation keys such as the home, back, menu, task and search buttons have also been increasingly replaced by nonphysical touch keys, then virtual, simulated on-screen navigation keys, commonly with access combinations such as a long press of the task key to simulate a short menu key press, as with home button to search. More recent “bezel-less” types have their screen surface space extended to the unit’s front bottom to compensate for the display.
