Smartphones

Is it a phone or a PDA or a handheld computer? No, it is a smartphone. Smartphones are all three, a phone, a pda and a handheld computer. You can make phone calls of course but the new windows mobile 5.0 you can email, instant message, surf the internet, listen to your favorites tunes, play games and even keep your appointment schedule using pocket outlook's calendar.

Windows mobile is Microsoft's answer to RIM's BlackBerry technology that has become extremely popular in the last two years, especially among high-end business clients. That is why they have built instant messenger and hotmail email access into the operating system. To expand their reach to other carriers, Microsoft has designed Windows Mobile. So, smartphones will use 30% less power making them attractive to carriers like Cingular, Verizon etc, who allow customers a wide range of customization features.

According to industry analysts, windows mobile is now the number one stand alone smartphone and PDA operating system, probably due toi the fact that it is backward compatible soo most applications and files from earlier version will work on version 5. But, Nokia's Symbian still has the lion's share of the overall market and RIM's BlackBerry is rapidly gathering market share in the PDA category.

The advent of better, longer lasting batteries and persistent memory has made the newer smartphones considerably more user friendly and therefore more popular.The larger screens and slide out QWERTY keyboards make using the new smartphones a lot easier when using their computer functions. A small keyboard beats a stylus any day for working with word and excel documents and is a nice improvement for text messaging.

Some of the new smartphones are equipped with powerful speaker and really sharp display screens which will make the music lovers and the gamers happy especially with ATI and Nvidia offering 3D acceleration chips for mobile devices like smartphones to provide the high quality available in PC games.

With the advent of smartphone, the line between a pocket PC and the mobile phone may be blurring but the programs for one platform still will not work on the other.

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About the Author

Matt Smith has been involved in the wireless and smartphones market for over 13 years. He is a contributing publisher at 4-Cell-Phones.com