Smartphone - what is it?

Although for many people the era of "smart" mobile devices has already come, some still ask: "Smartphone - what is it?" Indeed, a person, when he came to the store to buy a mobile phone, can not always understand what is behind the devices On the windows: smartphones, habitual cell phones or compact personal computers (PDAs). After all, the ephemeral boundary that once separated one class of apparatus from another has already practically disappeared, and manufacturers gradually unify their products. A vivid example is the mass products of the Chinese industry, outwardly copying such models, as, for example, Samsung Galaxy smartphones, but by features and capabilities significantly different. To understand what is hidden under the definition of "smart" phone, let's make a small mental journey into the past.

Cell phone

The ability to talk at a distance with a telephone set marked the beginning of a new era. Further improvement of the idea led to the emergence of fairly compact wireless communication devices. An infrastructure has emerged and developed - a system of base stations and a corresponding network. It was then that mobile phones began to appear on the market. In fact, their functions were similar to wired cousins, but voice and data were transmitted by radio waves. As a pleasant addition, manufacturers began to include in the devices the ability to perform simple mathematical calculations (calculator) and view the days of the week (calendar).

Portable computers

Without mentioning the CCP, you can not answer the question "smartphone - what is it?" In parallel with mobile phones, there existed and developed another branch of compact devices - handheld computers. The enlarged screen, much more powerful computing units, some multimedia functions - this is the PDA. These devices are much closer to laptops than to mobile phones, although due to their size they are often compared to the latter. One of the differences was the presence in the PDA of an operating system that allows installing the corresponding programs that expand the possibilities. Subsequently, GSM blocks were added to these devices, which gave them the capabilities of mobile phones. So there were "smart" (smart) phones. For example, you can already buy smartphones from Samsung and some other companies that have a powerful multi-core processor of the appropriate architecture; RAM, the amount of which is measured by gigabytes; Improved sound reproducing systems and touch screen.

Smartphone - what is it?

As already mentioned, any such device must necessarily operate under the control of one of the known operating systems. Thus, the presence of Windows Mobile (or Phone), Linux, Android, iOS, Bada or BB OS on board, as well as the SIM card block, automatically means that this device is a smartphone. That is a kind of mini-computer with the capabilities of a mobile phone. Considering the question "smartphone - what it is", one can not help recalling numerous models of mobile phones, in which you can install only applications written in Java. There are a lot of such solutions among Chinese copies of well-known smartphone models. This is the mobile phones, whose functions are expanded. Although they have their own operating system, it is rigidly "tied to the gland" and is narrowly focused on performing a certain range of tasks.