Smartphone:
A smartphone is a mobile phone built on a mobile operating system, with more advanced computing capability and connectivity than a feature phone. The first smartphones combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) with a mobile phone. Later models added the functionality of portable media players, low-end compact digital cameras, pocket video cameras, andGPS navigation units to form one multi-use device. Many modern smartphones also include high-resolution touch screens and web browsers that display standard web pages as well as mobile-optimized sites. High-speed data access is provided by Wi-Fi and mobile broadband. In recent years, the rapid development of mobile app markets and of mobile commerce has been drivers of smartphone adoption.
The mobile operating systems (OS) used by modern smartphones include Google's Android, Apple's iOS, Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry OS, Samsung's Bada, Microsoft's Windows Phone, Hewlett-Packard's web OS, and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo and MeeGo. Such operating systems can be installed on many different phone models, and typically each device can receive multiple OS software updates over its lifetime. A few other upcoming operating systems are Mozilla's Firefox OS, Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu Phone, and Tizen.
Smartphones overtook older-style phones in sales worldwide in early 2013.
History of Smartphones:
Origin of the term:
Although devices combining telephony and computing were conceptualized as early as 1973 and were offered for sale beginning in 1994, the term "smartphone" did not appear until 1997, when Ericsson described its GS 88 "Penelope" concept as a "Smart Phone".
The distinction between smartphones and feature phones can be vague, and there is no official definition for what constitutes the difference between them. One of the most significant differences is that the advanced application programming interfaces (APIs) on smartphones for running third-party