Smartphone

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smartphone is a handheld personal computer with a mobile operating system and an integrated mobile broadband cellular networkconnection for voice, SMS, and Internet data communication; most if not all smartphones also support Wi-Fi. Smartphones are typically pocket-sized, as opposed to tablet computers, which are much larger. They are able to run a variety of software components, known as “apps”. Most basic apps (e.g. event calendar, camera, web browser) come pre-installed with the system, while others are available for download from official sources like the Google Play Storeor Apple App Store. Apps can receive bug fixes and gain additional functionalitythrough software updates; similarly, operating systems are able to update. Modern smartphones have a touchscreen color display with a graphical user interface that covers the front surface and enables the user to use a virtual keyboard to type and press onscreen icons to activate "app" features. Mobile payment is now a common theme amongst most smartphones.

Today, smartphones largely fulfill their users' needs for a telephone, digital camera and video camera, GPS navigation, a media player, clock, news, calculator, web browser, handheld video game player, flashlight, compass, an address book, note-taking, digital messaging, an event calendar, etc. Typical smartphones will include one or more of the following sensors: magnetometer, proximity sensor, barometer, gyroscope, or accelerometer. Since 2010, smartphones adopted integrated virtual assistants, such as Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, BlackBerry Assistant and Samsung Bixby. Most smartphones produced from 2012 onward have high-speed mobile broadband 4G LTE capability and touchscreen starting to grow in use more.

In 1999, the Japanese firm NTT DoCoMo released the first smartphones to achieve mass adoption within a country. Smartphones were starting to grow little by the late 2000s. Smartphones started to expand in the third quarter of 2012. In the third quarter of 2012, one billion smartphones were in use worldwide. Global smartphone sales surpassed the sales figures for feature phones in early 2013.

History[edit | edit source]

  • Forerunner

The first commercially available device that could be properly referred to as a "smartphone" began as a prototype called "Angler" developed by Frank Canova in 1992 while at IBMand

IBM Simon and charging base (1994).

demonstrated in November of that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show. 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 touch screen-equipped 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. The term "smart phone" or "smartphone" was not coined until a year after the introduction of the Simon, appearing in print as early as 1995, describing AT&T's PhoneWriter Communicator.

  • Early integration of data signals with telephony

The first integration of data signals with telephony was conceptualized by Nikola Tesla in 1909 and pioneered by Theodore Paraskevakos beginning in 1968 with his work on transmission of electronic data through telephone lines. In 1971, while he was working with Boeing in Huntsville, Alabama, Paraskevakos demonstrated a transmitter and receiver that provided additional ways

The first caller identification receiver (1971).

to communicate with remote equipment. This formed the original basis for what is now known as caller ID. The first caller ID equipment was installed at Peoples' Telephone Company in Leesburg, Alabama and was demonstrated to several telephone companies. The original and historic working models are still in the possession of Paraskevakos.