Basic Smartphone Terms

Technology has inspired a growing crop of new words and phrases

The world of smartphones is filled with obscure acronyms and technical jargon. Below are just a few of the terms you may encounter.

- Android: A smartphone operating system and software platform created by Google. There are a number of competing mobile operating systems including BlackBerry and Apple’s iOS.

- Apps: Short for applications or, more accurately, applications software. Apps are computer software designed to help users perform a specific task. Apps can be used with cellphones.

- Browse: Software that allows the user to access Internet sites.

- Calling plan: The package of services offered by a wireless service provider. The plan usually includes monthly charges, voicemail and data, among other things.

- Dynamic memory: Also known as shared memory, it’s a way of organizing different types of data in the phone’s memory.

- 4G: The fourth generation of cellular wireless, which succeeds 3G and 2G.

- Graphics processing unit: The GPU is a specialized circuit that helps to manage computer graphics. Modern smartphones typically come with this.- - - HTML: Short for hypertext markup language, which is used to create web pages. Designed for desktop computers. A newer format, XHTML, is designed for mobile devices.

- Moore’s Law: We’re including this — a canny engineering observation, not a law of nature — to provide a little insight. In 1965, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, which makes computer chips, famously predicted that “The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months.” His prediction has largely been accurate. The nearly half century of advances has allowed computing devices to become cheaper and smaller and to perform an ever-growing number of tasks.

- MMS: Short for multimedia messaging services. It allows text, photos, audio and video, or a combination of the four. Most current mobile phones have this.

- Operating system: This manages the hardware and software of a smartphone.

- Roaming: Using a mobile phone outside of your service provider’s coverage area. Typically, service providers charge higher fees for calls, messages and access to the Internet.

- Smartphone: A cellphone that can do some of the same things as a personal computer, including providing Internet access and editing Microsoft Office documents.

- Text messaging: More commonly known as texting, this allows short messages to be sent and received on a mobile phone.

- Video calling: Also known as videoconferencing, this allows people to see live video of each other when talking.

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Apple Now the World’s Third Largest Cellphone Maker

Apple has moved past LG in the worldwide rankings of mobile-phone unit sales. According to IDC, Apple is now the world’s third largest mobile-phone manufacturer, behind Nokia and Samsung.

Apple jumped two spots over the course of 2011. This time last year, Apple held fifth place among the world’s top phone manufacturers.

However, there still remains a huge gap between Apple and the twin forces of Samsung and Nokia, which dominate the mobile-phone market thanks to the popularity of their inexpensive feature phones. For Q4 2011, Nokia owned 26.6 percent of the worldwide mobile-phone market, Samsung held 22.8 percent and Apple had 8.7 percent. For the year overall, the stats were slightly different: Nokia had 27 percent of the market, Samsung had 21.3 percent and Apple had 6 percent, just beating out the 5.7 percent of LG Electronics.

“The strength of the iPhone 4S in Q4 alone clearly propelled Apple to the third position overall,” IDC analyst Kevin Restivo said. Apple had blockbuster sales last quarter, selling more than 37.04 million iPhones over the holiday season. Most of that was due to demand for the iPhone 4S, and, in the U.S., reduced prices for the year-old iPhone 4 and 2-year-old 3GS helped boost sales as well.

Widespread availability was key, too.

“I think Apple’s success is due to the presence of the iPhone in an enormous number of markets,” Canalysis principal analyst Pete Cunningham told Wired. Indeed, the iPhone 4S enjoyed the fastest iPhone rollout in Apple’s history. It’s now available in more than 90 countries, including China. In the company’s most recent earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that iPhone 4S demand in China “has been staggering,” despite the phone only having just launched there.


Image: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker

Simple feature phones still make up the majority of mobile phone sales, but smartphones are a rapidly growing market. And phone manufacturers can’t hedge their bets on dumb phones the way they could in the past. Just look at LG.

“LG really missed the entire touchscreen smartphone game,” Restivo said. “Only years after Apple made its mark, LG tried to transition more successfully into the smartphone place, and it’s still recovering.”

Unless its Lumia smartphones pick up momentum, Nokia could follow a path similar to LG’s, as Nokia was also late to the smartphone game. But Samsung has a solid footing in both arenas, with solid feature phone sales and record-breaking smartphone sales.

Restivo says that Apple will need to better penetrate emerging markets like those in Russia, Brazil and the middle east if it wants to sustain and improve its growth in the mobile phone space. But innovation is still the prime factor in driving Apple’s success, Restivo says.

“Apple has to continue to capture people’s interest,” Restivo said. “It’s not just about adding a better camera or processor.”

Indeed, chasing pure sales volume isn’t in Apple’s best interests, and it’s not the secret to its runaway success in the mobile space. “I’d probably argue it’s not important for Apple to be the number one vendor in the market,” Cunningham said. “The important aspect is Apple’s share of the value of the market as opposed to the volume.”

Still, as anyone with the hint of a competitive streak knows: It doesn’t hurt to be number one in every ranking, too.

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Smartphone Owners Prone to Using in the Bathroom

 

Smartphone owners just can't stop using their phones, even when they are answering nature's call, according to survey that tracked cellphone usage in the bathroom.

Marketing firm 11Mark surveyed 1,000 Americans and found that three-fourths of the participants admitted to using their smartphones in the bathroom. One-quarter of the respondents said they never go into the bathroom without their phone.

Men and women were about equal in their bathroom usage of smartphones, with 74 percent of males and 76 percent of women acknowledging they use their phones there.

However, men appear to be more attached to their mobile devices, with 30 percent saying they never go to the bathroom without their phone, compared to 20 percent for women. A small number of men (20 percent) and women (13 percent) even admitted to conducting work calls from the stalls.

Reading texts (67 percent) and answering calls (63 percent) are the most common smartphone tasks performed in the bathroom, according to the survey, although more than half of the respondents (59 percent) sent a text while on the toilet and more than a third either read e-mail (42 percent) or confessed to initiating calls (41 percent) from the bathroom.

Droid (87 percent) and BlackBerry (84 percent) owners use their phones in the bathroom more than iPhone (77 percent) users, but BlackBerry users (75 percent) are more likely to answer a call than Droid (67 percent) or iPhone (60 percent) users.

Not surprisingly, Generation Y were the kings of smartphone bathroom usage, with 91 percent admitting to the practice, followed by Generation X (87 percent), baby boomers (65 percent) and those born before 1946 (47 percent).

Although not as popular as talking and texting, apps are being used from the bathroom, too. Gen Y (59 percent) topped that category, trailed by Gen X (43 percent), boomers (22 percent) and those born before 1946 (8 percent).

The survey also predicted that buying from the bathroom is poised for growth, with 16 percent of Gen Y smartphone users professing to have made a purchase from the boathroom, 10 percent of Gen Xers, 6 percent of boomers and 2 percent of those born before 1946.

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Smartphones Making More Danger to Drivers

There's good news and bad news in the debate around the role of electronics and distracted driving.

The good news is that if you've talked on the phone while driving (as most of us have), you weren't raising your risk of a crash, say experts. The bad news is that you tripled your crash risk when you flipped open a handheld phone and dialed it while driving. And if you texted, the risks nearly jumped off the scale.

"If you're looking for your phone, reaching for it, answering it, or dialing it -- that's when the risk increases," said Charlie Klauer, a research scientist for Virginia Tech's Transportation Institute (VTTI), in a Design News interview.


Smartphones call on users to look, read, and even type. Source: Car Connectivity Consortium

Klauer and others who have equipped cars with cameras and collected millions of miles of data on crashes and near-crashes say that the key to distraction is visual, not cognitive. In other words, talking and thinking aren't issues, but taking your eyes off the road is.

And that's where the real problem lies. The phones that are now making their way into the vehicle are visual, which is bad enough, but they're also manual. They call on users to look, read, and even type. And while the amount of cellphone gabbing in cars is said to be dropping, the amount of smartphone use is skyrocketing.

"We can have a debate about whether talking is dangerous, but we really need to focus on what we are using phones for today," Daniel V. McGehee, director of human factors and vehicle safety research at the University of Iowa's Public Policy Center, told us. "With smartphones, we are now getting into visual-manual issues. We're not only looking at the phone; we're manipulating it."

VTTI's study of cellphone use showed that there was virtually no statistical difference between those who talked on the phone and those who didn't. But for drivers who dialed, the risk of a crash tripled. And in a study of truck drivers who texted, the risks jumped by a factor of 23.

"Texting is in a league all it's own," Klauer says.

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HTC Ville thinnest phone rumored to land at T-Mobile

If you were feeling let down by T-Mobile’s weak showing at CES this year, it’s time to turn that frown upside down. According to Evan Blass of PocketNow, T-Mobile will begin carrying HTC’s thinnest phone ever created, the HTC Ville, this spring.

Expected to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress, rumored specs on the HTC Ville have been around since early November, 2011. Along with Android 4.0 and Sense UI 4, the Ville is expected to launch with:

• 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4
• Adreno 225 GPU
• 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD display
• Beats Audio
• Backside-illuminated 8 megapixel camera capable of rivaling point-and-shoot quality
• 1650mAh battery

As exciting as the Snapdragon S4, Android 4.0 and Super AMOLED display are, the Ville’s crowning achievement is its sleek metal construction and staggering thinness. At just under 8mm, the Ville will be thinner than both the iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy S II.

Along with information on the Ville, Blass also detailed a new service coming to HTC known as HTC Family. HTC Family will be integrated in the latest version of Sense, and features new ways for families to communicate, along with geolocation tools for staying connected. HTC Family is also rumored to be announced at MWC. Look for the T-Mobile branded Ville to on display at CTIA.

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BlackBerry Gemini 3G Specification

Blackberry Gemini 3G 

Available features

* 2.0MP Digital Camera
* Video Camera Capabilities
* Supports BlackBerry App World™
* 256MB Flash Memory
* Wi-Fi® enabled
* BlackBerry® Maps
* Built-in GPS capabilities
* 3G network access
* Bluetooth® enabled
* Multimedia Player
* Wireless Email
* Organizer
* Browser
* Phone
* SMS/MMS

Display
* Clear, high-resolution display
* Transmissive TFT LCD
* 320×240 pixel screen
* Displays over 65,000 colors

Camera & Video Recording
* 2.0 MP camera
* Fixed Focus
* No Flash
* 5X digital zoom
* Video Camera Recording:
Normal Mode (320×240 pixel), MMS Mode (176×144 pixel)

BlackBerry Maps and GPS
* Includes BlackBerry Maps
* Assisted, autonomous and simultaneous GPS enabled
* e911 capabilities

Bluetooth
* BlackBerry Curve 8520: Bluetooth® v2.0
* BlackBerry Curve 8530: Bluetooth® v2.1
* Headset Profile (HSP), Handset Profile (HFP)
* Address Book Integration using AT commands and using OBEX (Object Push)
* Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP), Dial-Up Networking (DUN)
* Bluetooth Stereo (A2DP / AVRCP), Serial Port Profile (SPP)
* Secure Simple Pairing (SSP)

Wi-Fi
* 802.11b/g enabled
* Wi-Fi Alliance Certifications: WPA/WPA2 Personal and Enterprise, WMM, WMM Power Save, Wi-Fi Protected Setup
* Cisco CCX certification
* Wi-Fi access to BlackBerry® Enterprise Server
* Wi-Fi access to BlackBerry® Internet Server
* Direct IP web browsing over Wi-Fi
* Support for UMA

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Sony Xperia Ion : 4G and Extremely Thin Smartphone

Sony enters the LTE cellphone game here at the Consumer Electronics Show with its latest offering, the Xperia Ion smartphone. Along with 4G LTE speed from AT&T, the phone features an HDMI output, 4.6-inch display (compared to a 3.5-inch display on the iPhone 4S), a 12 megapixel camera and an extremely thin body.



Beyond the traditional smartphone specs there are a lot of features that make it uniquely Sony. It runs a mobile version of Sony’s Bravia engine, the same technology that goes into Sony Bravia HDTVs, making especially vivid colors on the screen. And since it’s a Sony you can download PlayStation and PlayStation portable games to the phone. It’s also got a compatible dock to view on a larger display.

No price has been set, but expect to see it on store shelves in the second quarter of 2012.
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