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What is your definition of a smartphone?

Posted by Sloan Bowman on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 · 7 Comments 

The term smartphone is used very loosely these days. Just a couple of years a go a smartphone was defined by a phone that has an operating system that allowed you to develop and run third party applications through a standard interface. Today carriers label a phone as a smartphone if it contains a qwerty keyboard of any sort including an on screen touch keyboard. From a carrier’s standpoint this is the perfect way to provide a tool to convince the consumer that a full data plan is required to use the phone. In all reality what a carrier defines as a smartphone should have no bearing on what a real smartphone is.

I’m sure you noticed I never mentioned multitasking in the above definition of a smartphone. One definition of smart is “showing mental alertness and calculation and resourcefulness” which I’m sure you agree the majority of phones on the market in 2010 fulfill at least to some degree. Does a platform need to multitask to be classified as a smartphone? While obviously it is not an ideal solution for heavy users it is unfair to state that something isn’t smart just because it doesn’t have a feature set you don’t like or that doesn’t meet your needs. After all another definition of smart is “ache: be the source of pain” and by the definition we can easily classify most phones.

Ask your self these questions:

  1. What is your definition of a smartphone?
  2. What features are required to fit in this overly used stamp on phone technology?
  3. Are you biased based on your needs?
  4. Does a phone require a certain type of hardware to be classified as “smart”?

The flood gates are open, let us hear it.

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Filed under mobile, tech · Tagged with ,

  • brendan_donegan

    I don't think it's unclear at all – you need two things:

    A smartphone OS (THIS is the tricky thing to define)
    Be a phone (as opposed to a netbook running Android, or an iPad, or an iPod etc)

    Now let's debate what a smartphone OS is…

  • sloanb

    You and I both share opinions on what a smart OS is however I also feel that it could be defined differently for each user to a degree. One might actually say that the definition of what the OS is classified as doesn't really matter, what really matters is it improves productivity and the quality of life for the user. If those goals are achieved it sure feels smart even though it may be dumb as a doorknob.

  • ketchup71

    I think a smartphone must be:
    1. a phone, so you can use it as phone
    2. an application plattform, so you can install and run additional software not thouht up when the phone was manufactured
    3. a fully functional PDA, including some painless input method, calendar, contact management, notes and out-of-the-box synchronisation to the respective standard desktop PIM applications (Windows Outlook mandatory; I always hope for Mac Calendar/Addressbook; hopefully Linux, but my desktop's not Linux, so I don't know if there's a de-facto standard)
    4. an internet device, so you can access … the internet. Mail and Web are mandatory.

    These things must work as intuitively as using a phone.

    Then there are some thing I'd like in a “good” smartphone. As the above requirements tend to make the device more expensive that a regular cellpone, a smartphone should last longer than a year. Since it replaces the PDA, it will be much more heavy used than a regular phone. Hard- and software must be able to handle that. That means any mechanics, but things like power pack, processor and memory dimensions, too: My last Palm PDA needs to be recharged somewhat between 1/week and 1/month; I could have literally installed hundreds of apps. In contrast, my current N97 must be recharged between once in 2 days and 2/day, and it comes jammed to the lid with useless software and a crazy partition scheme, so I can't install much more applications I like.

    Finally: Multimedia is nice, I'm the last once shunning some eye-candy, but if I have to decide between eye-candy and operation time/functionality, I … probably … would not choose the eye-candy.
    :)

  • sloanb

    I appreciate the comments. I agree with your points and wanted to make a few of my own as well. First off you said “These things must work as intuitively as using a phone.” when in all reality it should probably say these things should work as intuitively as a phone. It is the goal of every company to create a intuitive phone but as you are well aware some designers ideas are in a different ball park from what we consider intuitive as end users.

    Regarding battery life versus the Palm and other PDA type devices is hard to do. Those devices were able to achieve such great battery life due to the fact that they didn't have 27/7 GPRS/EDGE/3G/CDMA turned on. This alone cuts the batter life of most phones in half if not more.

    Again I really appreciate the comment and keep them coming. Great ideas!

  • ketchup71

    First, I think things like extended battery life are “nice to have”. I'd just prefer devices which are not too heavy, have reasonable battery life, and will last for 2-4 years over shiny toys which can just be used to demonstrate some techs.

    But I think battery life is an edge case. I agree, the battery life situation is completely different for “always on” devices compared to hibernating devices like the old Palm (which, btw, had no multitasking, and was a perfect device as PDAs goes). But battery life translates directly into usefulness: If you need a plug after 6h, your device is dead just when you want scribble down the follow-up meeting or the contact address. Which is a mayor embarrassment. ;)

    So a PDA-replacement smartphone must bridge a working day heavy usage. I wouldn't expect 9-10h movie playback, but 9-10h regular mail checks, some web surfing, and the occasional phone call (maybe 1-2h).

    A perfect device would give the user some way to determinate how to extend battery life (e.g. by making some app resource usages visible: memory, CPU and power footprint), maybe connect background services to profiles (such as “low power profile: dim light, not twitter, re-configure mail to refresh 1/h”). And it would be great to say “switch to low-power profile for 1h, since I'm in a meeting anyway”, which I suspect I can kind of do with my N97 once I figure out how it's done.

    So: Yes, make thing operate intuitively is very important. Any feature I need to read the manual to enable is just plain wasted development effort, like painting gold-plated pictures on the power pack. ;)

    But, as I said, all “nice to have”. :)

  • http://www.adonisdemon.com Abul

    The clear definition of a “smartphone” is now blurred. Where a few years ago it was pretty clear, I think now it's just a word which no longer has a meaning.

  • http://everwas.com iankennedy

    Hi Sloan,

    This is a great question to bring up as Abul said, the definition has blurred recently. While I agree that it must be (a) a phone and, (b) run an OS which allows you to install additional software, I would also add that the phone itself must be “smart” in the sense that it has sensors which allow the phone to tell the OS something about it's context. These would include GPS, Camera, Mic, light sensor to control screen/keyboard brightness, accelerometer, etc. We can debate on the minimum set of sensors but I would think at least a GPS chip is needed to be useful.

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