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Difference between a smartphone and a mobile phone
Recently, people have stopped understanding how a smartphone differs from a regular cell phone. This is due to the fact that quite a long time ago smartphones have become the most popular commodity. They sell best now. And people began to forget about ordinary cell phones. They began to believe that now they simply do not exist, that smartphones have replaced cell phones. But this absolutely does not apply!
Some history
You should start with the fact that before there were no smartphones. Suffice it to recall 1987 when Nokia released a simple phone called Mobira Cityman 900 . It was real brick – heavy and large. And there was nothing better in this market. It’s hard to believe, but the phones of those years didn’t even know how to send and receive text messages! What’s more, they didn’t even get the contact book right away!
In the 90s, only desktop computers and laptops can be called intelligent. You could only dream of different types of smartphones and tablets or watch their use in the Star Trek series – its creators literally predicted the future.
The breakthrough came only in 2001, when the Nokia 9210 Communicator was released . It was one of the first smartphones. As the operating system the Symbian OS 6.0 operating system was installed, the device could also support a full QWERTY keyboard. The popularity of the model was that in the future almost all mobile devices equipped with intelligent functionality and a SIM card slot began to be called messengers. Especially devices with Windows Mobile on board.
Operating system
As you have already understood, a mobile phone differs from a smartphone by the lack of a real operating system. Instead, the mobile phone uses the simplest firmware, the functionality of which is not seriously extended. Such software only supports the installation of Java applications whose functionality is in many respects very limited. But there are exceptions. For example, in the mid-2000s Siemens mobile phones were popular on which some third-party plug-ins using a computer could be installed. Such extensions have given the phone owner new functions and sometimes even increased the amount of memory.
Modern and old smartphones work on the following operating systems:
- Android
- BlackBerry OS
- iOS
- Symbian
- Tizen
- Windows Mobile
- Windows Phone
There are several other mobile operating systems, but they are much less common. For example, the Firefox OS operating system cannot gain popularity. But the ordinary phone is different, because its manufacturer does not focus on the name of the software – on the device itself you can only watch its version.
Device design
The differences are not only in the software, but also in the design of the gadgets. Earlier, all mobile phones had a mechanical keyboard – usually digital, but sometimes QWERTY. But now you can find touch screen mobile phones – in particular, devices based on Bada software , whose support has recently been closed. This means that we can say that the lines connecting mobile phones and smartphones in this area have become blurred. But this is not entirely true.
Go to the official website of the manufacturer and familiarize yourself with the technical characteristics of the device. If it is a mobile phone, there will be no information about the amount of RAM or the processor being used. The fact is that for a smartphone these are very important values, because their speed depends on them. And simple mobile phones work stably even on the weakest components.
Other differences
Let’s return to the software. As already mentioned, traditional mobile phones, if they support the installation of additional programs, only in the form of strictly limited Java applications . And if you have a smartphone in your hand, you can install more advanced programs and games written in a completely different code. For example, hundreds of applications have been developed for Symbian with the extension .sys or .sysx . Well, Android is rich in tens or even hundreds of thousands of very good programs with the .apk extension – you can download them in the Google Play online store .
Smartphones and telephones also differ in costs. At the beginning of 2010, the former were much more expensive than the latter. But gradually the price of components began to fall, which is why smartphones began to cost less. But the difference is still felt. Devices with buttons are the cheapest. Mobile phones with a touch screen are already slightly more expensive, and their cost is similar to budget smartphones based on Android . For this reason, they are becoming less and less popular and it is increasingly difficult to find them on store shelves every day.
Summarizing
These are the most noticeable differences between smartphones and cell phones. Due to the lowering of production costs of components, the latter gradually lose their popularity. It is possible that in the future only “androids” and other smart devices will remain in stores, because the point of purchase of a little functional cell phone will simply disappear.
