At Tech 2.0, we liberally use the term 'smartphone' in our reviews and features, assuming that it's as common a term as 'mobile phone' or 'computer', but we've realised that there are still people out there who aren't too sure what it means. Many of them may actually be using a smartphone right now, but they just don't know it. We are regularly asked the question "What is a smartphone?", so here, we'll try and explain to you what a smartphone is and how different it is from a regular phone.

Nokia's Eseries run Series 60 3rd Edition

Many have tried to describe smartphones as phones with PDA-like functionality. Now, while it is true that smartphones offer PDA-like functionality, the converse is not true: not all phones with PDA-like functionality are smartphones. Regular or basic phones may also come with a set of features, such as a task manager, calendar, alarm, notes etc., but this doesn't make them all smartphones.

Similarly, smartphones have also been associated with touch-screen phones. This is because a lot of Windows Mobile phones like the i-mate and O2 offerings had/have touch-screens. But not all touch-screen phones are smartphones, and not all smartphones are touch-screen capable.

In the simplest manner, a smartphone is a phone that let's you install applications on it to extend the functionality of the phone.

Traditionally, this doesn't include phones that let you install Java MIDP or BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) applications, as those midlets are often sandboxed, i.e. confined to their own memory space with not much interaction with other system components or applications. However, this distinction has also diminished sufficiently as Java MIDP applications have become more powerful, gaining access to phone features such as Internet connectivity and the camera. But even then, technically, regular phones with Java MIDP support are not smartphones.

I-mate is a popular Windows Mobile phone brand.

Smartphones also allow multitasking, for eg. letting the web browser load a page in the background while you compose an SMS or an email. New multimedia phones have added this feature to the music player application, which can be pushed to the background while playing music to let you access other phone features, but this is limited to just that application. Regular phones may also offer a rudimentary form of multitasking where the application stays active in the background during an incoming phone call.

Smartphones run an operating system. Normal phones all use their own simpler, proprietary user interfaces. Nokia uses Series 40 (used in phones like the 6610 and 6270), Motorola uses the ageing P2K UI and others like Sony Ericsson and Samsung also have their own interfaces that are either the same or similar across their range of phones. Smartphones use more powerful operating systems such as Nokia's Series 60 UI based on the Symbian OS platform, used in devices such as the 6600, 6630, Nseries and Eseries phones. Sony Ericsson uses Symbian OS UIQ, used in the P and M series phones and also the new W950i Walkman. i-mate, O2, HP, HTC/Qtek/Dopod etc. all use Windows Mobile.