Smart Phones features and what’s best

A smart phone is a mobile phone that offers advanced capabilities, often resembling PC functionality; it combines voice services with e-mail, fax, pager, or Internet access. Features can often mimic a PDA (Personal Data Assistant) for scheduling and running applications.

Distinguishing characteristics include:

1. Operating System

2. Software

3. Web Access

4. QWERTY Keyboard

5. Email

Operating System: Generally speaking, a smart phone will be based on an operating system that allows it to run productivity applications. BlackBerry smart phones run the BlackBerry OS while other devices run the Palm OS or Windows Mobile. There are smart phones operating systems that are pared-down versions of desktop Linux, too.

Software: While almost all cell phones include some sort of software (even the most basic models these days include an address book or some sort of contact manager, for example), a smart phone will have the ability to do more. Typically it will arrange the contents in an expending file structure much like that of windows with access and use of traditional Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Outlook. Applications allow for creating editing saving and sharing files. Additional applications can be downloaded, such as personal and business finance managers, photo managers, music applications and downloads, and GPS.

Web Access: More smart phones can access the Web at higher speeds, thanks to the growth of 3G data networks and the addition of Wi-Fi support to many handsets. Still, while not all smart phones offer high-speed Web access, most do, and the others offer some other sort of access. You can use your smart phone to browse your favorite internet sites, update social sites such as facebook, and even make purchases online.

QWERTY Keyboard: By our definition, a smart phone includes a QWERTY keyboard. This means that the keys are laid out in the same manner they would be on your computer keyboard, not in alphabetical order on top of a numeric keypad, where you have to tap the number 1 to enter an A, B, or C. The keyboard can be hardware (physical keys that you type on) or software (on a touch screen, like you'll find on the iPhone) which is becoming more common, with some models including both options.

Messaging: All cell phones can send and receive text messages, but what sets a smartphone apart is its handling of e-mail. A smart phone can sync with your personal and professional e-mail accounts in the same manner as from a PC. Most smart phones can support multiple e-mail accounts, as well as access to the popular instant messaging services, like AOL's AIM, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

Reviews of the TOP 10 Smart Phones

For reviews of the top ten smart phones as rated by SuccessFactors, please click on

the link below. The review is comparative and exhaustive in detail in order to help you make a choice that fits your needs.

http://cell-phones.toptenreviews.com/smartphones/

Market Directions

Predictions have been published by Gartner and IDC as to where the smartphone industry will go over the next four years.

First of all, here are the two sets of predictions, in terms of raw numbers: Gartner and IDC. Just in case you want to look them up!

Many people have also pointed out that predictions made a couple of years ago have been wildly out, with few people predicting Android would be such a runaway success. However, Android has been out for 18 months now and it's very much a known quantity. In addition, Apple seemed content to sit at the top of the market, with premium devices at a premium price (it has been speculated that an iPhone “lite” at half the price might do rather well, as long as concessions on the applications don’t limit its demand.

The biggest take away from the chart is that the overall size of the smartphone 'market' is rising sharply, more than quadrupling over the next four years. Unlike the overall phone market, whose size is restricted by the sheer number of people in the world, the smartphone market can rise and rise as more people with 'feature' phones upgrade to something with a smartphone OS.

As a result, the sales of devices powered by most of the major smartphone OS players are expected to rise as well. A glance at the chart shows that sales of Symbian smart phones will rise and rise, up to an expected nearly 300 million a year by 2014. And, significantly, Symbian 'sales' are expected to stay ahead of even Android OS, a platform which has enjoyed a meteoric rise and which will continue prospering, but which will hit its own issues of fragmentation and saturation in due course. It is still believed that a Symbian and Android phone of roughly equal specification won't come out at a similar price - the Symbian-powered one is likely to be 20 to 30% cheaper, and this difference should, ultimately, keep Symbian ahead.

Also of note is that everyone agrees that, marvelous though the iPhone is in its own way, its closed ecosystem, high prices and more limited distribution will all conspire to help its sales figures level out.

This chart clearly shows the relative slide of Symbian's market share (despite the aforementioned continuing rise in sales units), amidst the growing competition. However, current Gartner and IDC predictions clearly show Symbian finishing the next four years as (still) the market leader in smartphone operating systems.