106-447: The Sony Ericsson V800 is a mobile phone manufactured by the Japanese - Swedish firm Sony Ericsson and released in late 2004. It is no longer available on the market. The V800 was available in three colors, Black , White and Copper . The V800 is a triband 3G clamshell phone. It has a rotating camera (which can flip up to 180 degrees) that can take digital photographs in
212-411: A gyroscope , an accelerometer , and more ), and support diverse wireless communication protocols (such as LTE , 5G NR , Wi-Fi , Bluetooth , and satellite navigation ). In the mid-2020s, smartphone manufacturers have begun to integrate satellite messaging connectivity and satellite emergency services into devices for use in remote regions where there is no reliable cellular network . Following
318-563: A resolution up to 1.3 megapixels . It supports WAP 2.0, GPRS and UMTS . Its connectivity includes an IrDA port and Bluetooth . It supports polyphonic ringtones in MIDI up to 72 tones, and mobile games in Java ME . Its internal memory (6.8 megabytes ) can be expanded with Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick Duo Pro cards, the latter up to 8 gigabytes , soon available of up to 16 gigabytes . In Japan , Europe and New Zealand , this phone
424-665: A " keyboard bar " form factor, like the BlackBerry line, Windows Mobile smartphones, Palm Treos , and some of the Nokia Eseries . A few hid their full physical QWERTY keyboard in a sliding form factor , like the Danger Hiptop line. Some even had only a numeric keypad using T9 text input , like the Nokia Nseries and other models in the Nokia Eseries . Resistive touchscreens with stylus -based interfaces could still be found on
530-504: A "devices and services" company. Despite the growth of Windows Phone and the Lumia range (which accounted for nearly 90% of all Windows Phone devices sold), the platform never had significant market share in the key U.S. market, and Microsoft was unable to maintain Windows Phone's momentum in the years that followed, resulting in dwindling interest from users and app developers. After Balmer
636-431: A 3.5" capacitive touchscreen with twice the common resolution of most smartphone screens at the time , and introduced multi-touch to phones, which allowed gestures such as "pinching" to zoom in or out on photos, maps, and web pages. The iPhone was notable as being the first device of its kind targeted at the mass market to abandon the use of a stylus, keyboard, or keypad typical of contemporary smartphones, instead using
742-400: A basic mobile phone, which is only capable of voice calling and text messaging. Feature phones and basic mobile phones tend to use a proprietary, custom-designed software and user interface . By contrast, smartphones generally use a mobile operating system that often shares common traits across devices. The critical advantage that modern cellular networks have over predecessor systems is
848-434: A customer unit could use. A cellular network mobile phone system gets its name from dividing the service area into many small cells, each with a base station with (for example) a useful range on the order of a kilometer (mile). These systems have dozens or hundreds of possible channels allocated to them. When a subscriber is using a given channel for a telephone connection, that frequency is unavailable for other customers in
954-439: A dependence on third-party sources providing applications for multiple platforms. The advantages of a design with software powerful enough to support advanced applications and a large capacitive touchscreen affected the development of another smartphone OS platform, Android , with a more BlackBerry-like prototype device scrapped in favor of a touchscreen device with a slide-out physical keyboard, as Google's engineers thought at
1060-418: A few sets of radio channels (frequencies). Once these few channels were in use by customers, no further customers could be served until another user vacated a channel. It would be impractical to give every customer a unique channel since there would not be enough bandwidth allocated to the mobile service. As well, technical limitations such as antenna efficiency and receiver design limit the range of frequencies
1166-451: A few smartphones, like the Palm Treos , which had dropped their handwriting input after a few early models that were available in versions with Graffiti instead of a keyboard. The late 2000s and early 2010s saw a shift in smartphone interfaces away from devices with physical keyboards and keypads to ones with large finger-operated capacitive touchscreens. The first phone of any kind with
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#17328633778591272-499: A fixed-location phone ( landline phone ). The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator , which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture, and therefore mobile telephones are called cellphones (or "cell phones") in North America. In addition to telephony , digital mobile phones support
1378-404: A large capacitive touchscreen as the sole means of interaction, and led to the decline of earlier, keyboard- and keypad-focused platforms. Later, navigation keys such as the home , back , menu , task and search buttons have also been increasingly replaced by nonphysical touch keys, then virtual, simulated on-screen navigation keys, commonly with access combinations such as a long press of
1484-519: A large capacitive touchscreen was the LG Prada , announced by LG in December 2006. This was a fashionable feature phone created in collaboration with Italian luxury designer Prada with a 3" 240 x 400 pixel screen, a 2-Megapixel digital camera with 144p video recording ability, an LED flash , and a miniature mirror for self portraits. In January 2007, Apple Computer introduced the iPhone . It had
1590-464: A large touchscreen for direct finger input as its main means of interaction. The iPhone's operating system was also a shift away from older operating systems (which older phones supported and which were adapted from PDAs and feature phones ) to an operative system powerful enough to not require using a limited, stripped down web browser that can only render pages specially formatted using technologies such as WML , cHTML , or XHTML and instead ran
1696-455: A lesser extent, handheld video game consoles , e-reader devices, pocket calculators , and GPS tracking units . Since the early 2010s, improved hardware and faster wireless communication (due to standards such as LTE and later 5G NR) have bolstered the growth of the smartphone industry . As of 2014, over a billion smartphones are sold globally every year. In 2019 alone, 1.54 billion smartphone units were shipped worldwide. 75.05 percent of
1802-481: A limited amount of cellular Internet access. PDA and mobile phone manufacturers competed in reducing the size of devices. The bulk of these smartphones combined with their high cost and expensive data plans, plus other drawbacks such as expansion limitations and decreased battery life compared to separate standalone devices, generally limited their popularity to " early adopters " and business users who needed portable connectivity. In March 1996, Hewlett-Packard released
1908-752: A major partnership with Microsoft, under which it would exclusively use Windows Phone on all of its future smartphones, and integrate Microsoft's Bing search engine and Bing Maps (which, as part of the partnership, would also license Nokia Maps data) into all future devices. The announcement led to the abandonment of both Symbian, as well as MeeGo —a Linux-based mobile platform it was co-developing with Intel. Nokia's low-end Lumia 520 saw strong demand and helped Windows Phone gain niche popularity in some markets, overtaking BlackBerry in global market share in 2013. In mid-June 2012, Meizu released its mobile operating system, Flyme OS . Many of these attempts to compete with Android and iPhone were short-lived. Over
2014-515: A mobile device, such as a smartphone. The term "app" is a shortening of the term "software application". A common data application on mobile phones is Short Message Service (SMS) text messaging. The first SMS message was sent from a computer to a mobile phone in 1992 in the UK while the first person-to-person SMS from phone to phone was sent in Finland in 1993. The first mobile news service, delivered via SMS,
2120-401: A number of distinguishing features. The International Telecommunication Union measures those with Internet connection, which it calls Active Mobile-Broadband subscriptions (which includes tablets, etc.). In the developed world, smartphones have now overtaken the usage of earlier mobile systems. However, in the developing world, they account for around 50% of mobile telephony . Feature phone
2226-501: A problem due to the design of the phone, the quality of the cellular network and compression algorithms used in long-distance calls . Audio quality can be improved using a VoIP application over WiFi . Cellphones have small speakers so that the user can use a speakerphone feature and talk to a person on the phone without holding it to their ear. The small speakers can also be used to listen to digital audio files of music or speech or watch videos with an audio component, without holding
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#17328633778592332-523: A redesigned user interface, support for gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, and a new web browser based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone. The following year, RIM released BlackBerry OS 7 and new models in the Bold and Torch ranges, which included a new Bold with a touchscreen alongside its keyboard, and the Torch 9860—the first BlackBerry phone to not include a physical keyboard. In 2013, it replaced
2438-416: A rotary knob ring around the lens and a tripod mount. While screen sizes have increased, manufacturers have attempted to make smartphones thinner at the expense of utility and sturdiness, since a thinner frame is more vulnerable to bending and has less space for components, namely battery capacity. The iPhone and later touchscreen-only Android devices together popularized the slate form factor , based on
2544-464: A single hand, since most thumbs cannot reach the entire screen surface; they may need to be shifted around in the hand, held in one hand and manipulated by the other, or used in place with both hands. Due to design advances, some modern smartphones with large screen sizes and "edge-to-edge" designs have compact builds that improve their ergonomics, while the shift to taller aspect ratios have resulted in phones that have larger screen sizes whilst maintaining
2650-512: A single platform. There are a huge variety of apps, including video games , music products and business tools. Up until that point, smartphone application distribution depended on third-party sources providing applications for multiple platforms, such as GetJar , Handango , Handmark , and PocketGear . Following the success of the App Store, other smartphone manufacturers launched application stores, such as Google's Android Market (later renamed to
2756-429: A small microchip called a Subscriber Identity Module or SIM card , in order to function. The SIM card is approximately the size of a small postage stamp and is usually placed underneath the battery in the rear of the unit. The SIM securely stores the service-subscriber key (IMSI) and the K i used to identify and authenticate the user of the mobile phone. The SIM card allows users to change phones by simply removing
2862-471: A telephone service area, which is divided up into 'cells'. Each cell uses a different set of frequencies from neighboring cells, and will typically be covered by three towers placed at different locations. The cell towers are usually interconnected to each other and the phone network and the internet by wired connections. Due to bandwidth limitations each cell will have a maximum number of cell phones it can handle at once. The cells are therefore sized depending on
2968-652: A variety of other services , such as text messaging , multimedia messaging , email , Internet access (via LTE , 5G NR or Wi-Fi ), short-range wireless communications ( infrared , Bluetooth ), satellite access ( navigation , messaging connectivity ), business applications, payments (via NFC ), multimedia playback and streaming ( radio , television ), digital photography , and video games . Mobile phones offering only basic capabilities are known as feature phones ( slang : "dumbphones" ); mobile phones that offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones . The first handheld mobile phone
3074-571: A version of Apple's Safari browser that could render full websites not specifically designed for mobile phones. Later Apple shipped a software update that gave the iPhone a built-in on-device App Store allowing direct wireless downloads of third-party software. This kind of centralized App Store and free developer tools quickly became the new main paradigm for all smartphone platforms for software development , distribution , discovery, installation , and payment, in place of expensive developer tools that required official approval to use and
3180-469: A very thin carbon microphone". Early predecessors of cellular phones included analog radio communications from ships and trains. The race to create truly portable telephone devices began after World War II, with developments taking place in many countries. The advances in mobile telephony have been traced in successive "generations", starting with the early zeroth-generation ( 0G ) services, such as Bell System 's Mobile Telephone Service and its successor,
3286-487: A wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing , email , and social media , as well as multimedia playback and streaming . Smartphones have built-in cameras , GPS navigation , and support for various communication methods, including voice calls, text messaging , and internet-based messaging apps. Smartphones are distinguished from older-design feature phones by their more advanced hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems , access to
Sony Ericsson V800 - Misplaced Pages Continue
3392-412: Is a term typically used as a retronym to describe mobile phones which are limited in capabilities in contrast to a modern smartphone . Feature phones typically provide voice calling and text messaging functionality, in addition to basic multimedia and Internet capabilities, and other services offered by the user's wireless service provider . A feature phone has additional functions over and above
3498-510: Is being used or not) using a technique known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the mobile phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone. The movements of a mobile phone user can be tracked by their service provider and, if desired, by law enforcement agencies and their governments. Both the SIM card and the handset can be tracked. China has proposed using this technology to track
3604-542: Is only available with Vodafone , and in other countries, it is only available through Vodafone associates (such as Smartone ). A similar phone, with different housing is available through other carriers in Europe as the Sony Ericsson Z800i . The Japanese version is called Vodafone 802SE . The Japanese version has cosmetic differences, such as a Japanese keypad and also a differently styled IMEI label inside, underneath
3710-468: The 5G NR (5G New Radio) standard. 5G can be implemented in low-band, mid-band or high-band millimeter-wave, with download speeds that can achieve gigabit-per-second (Gbit/s) range, aiming for a network latency of 1 ms. This near-real-time responsiveness and improved overall data performance are crucial for applications like online gaming , augmented and virtual reality , autonomous vehicles , IoT, and critical communication services. Smartphones have
3816-627: The Improved Mobile Telephone Service . These 0G systems were not cellular , supported a few simultaneous calls, and were very expensive. The first handheld cellular mobile phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing 2 kilograms (4.4 lb). The first commercial automated cellular network ( 1G ) analog was launched in Japan by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in 1979. This
3922-538: The J-SH04 , a Sharp J-Phone model sold in Japan in November 2000. It could instantly transmit pictures via cell phone telecommunication . By the mid-2000s, higher-end cell phones commonly had integrated digital cameras. In 2003 camera phones outsold stand-alone digital cameras, and in 2006 they outsold film and digital stand-alone cameras. Five billion camera phones were sold in five years, and by 2007 more than half of
4028-978: The Japanese market , such as mobile payments and shopping, near-field communication (NFC) allowing mobile wallet functionality to replace smart cards for transit fares, loyalty cards, identity cards, event tickets, coupons, money transfer, etc., downloadable content like musical ringtones , games , and comics , and 1seg mobile television . Phones built by Japanese manufacturers used custom firmware , however, and did not yet feature standardized mobile operating systems designed to cater to third-party application development , so their software and ecosystems were akin to very advanced feature phones . As with other feature phones, additional software and services required partnerships and deals with providers. The degree of integration between phones and carriers, unique phone features, non-standardized platforms, and tailoring to Japanese culture made it difficult for Japanese manufacturers to export their phones, especially when demand
4134-580: The Nokia 9000 Communicator , a digital cellular PDA based on the Nokia 2110 with an integrated system based on the PEN/GEOS 3.0 operating system from Geoworks . The two components were attached by a hinge in what became known as a clamshell design , with the display above and a physical QWERTY keyboard below. The PDA provided e-mail ; calendar, address book, calculator and notebook applications; text-based Web browsing; and could send and receive faxes. When closed,
4240-553: The Nokia N8 , Sony Ericsson Satio , and Samsung M8910 Pixon12 feature phone had 12 MP. The main camera of the 2009 Nokia N86 uniquely features a three-level aperture lens. The Altek Leo, a 14-megapixel smartphone with 3x optical zoom lens and 720p HD video camera was released in late 2010. In 2011, the same year the Nintendo 3DS was released, HTC unveiled the Evo 3D , a 3D phone with
4346-551: The OmniGo 700LX , a modified HP 200LX palmtop PC with a Nokia 2110 mobile phone piggybacked onto it and ROM -based software to support it. It had a 640 × 200 resolution CGA compatible four-shade gray-scale LCD screen and could be used to place and receive calls, and to create and receive text messages, emails and faxes. It was also 100% DOS 5.0 compatible, allowing it to run thousands of existing software titles, including early versions of Windows . In August 1996, Nokia released
Sony Ericsson V800 - Misplaced Pages Continue
4452-855: The Philippines . A pilot project in Bali was launched in 2011 by the International Finance Corporation and an Indonesian bank, Bank Mandiri . Mobile payments were first trialled in Finland in 1998 when two Coca-Cola vending machines in Espoo were enabled to work with SMS payments. Eventually, the idea spread and in 1999, the Philippines launched the country's first commercial mobile payments systems with mobile operators Globe and Smart . Some mobile phones can make mobile payments via direct mobile billing schemes, or through contactless payments if
4558-553: The Pre 3 and HP TouchPad tablet. As part of a proposed divestment of its consumer business to focus on enterprise software, HP abruptly ended development of future webOS devices in August 2011, and sold the rights to webOS to LG Electronics in 2013, for use as a smart TV platform. Research in Motion introduced the vertical-sliding BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry OS 6 in 2010, which featured
4664-645: The WCDMA standard. This was followed by 3.5G or 3G+ enhancements based on the high-speed packet access (HSPA) family, allowing UMTS networks to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. 3G is able to provide mobile broadband access of several Mbit/s to smartphones and mobile modems in laptop computers. This ensures it can be applied to mobile Internet access, VoIP , video calls, and sending large e-mail messages, as well as watching videos, typically in standard-definition quality. By 2009, it had become clear that, at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by
4770-627: The exponential scaling and miniaturization of MOS transistors down to sub-micron levels ( Moore's law ), the improved lithium-ion battery , faster digital mobile data networks ( Edholm's law ), and more mature software platforms that allowed mobile device ecosystems to develop independently of data providers . In the 2000s, NTT DoCoMo 's i-mode platform, BlackBerry , Nokia 's Symbian platform, and Windows Mobile began to gain market traction, with models often featuring QWERTY keyboards or resistive touchscreen input and emphasizing access to push email and wireless internet . In
4876-479: The installed base of all mobile phones were camera phones. Sales of separate cameras peaked in 2008. Many early smartphones did not have cameras at all, and earlier models that had them had low performance and insufficient image and video quality that could not compete with budget pocket cameras and fulfill user's needs. By the beginning of the 2010s almost all smartphones had an integrated digital camera. The decline in sales of stand-alone cameras accelerated due to
4982-413: The internet , business applications, mobile payments , and multimedia functionality, including music, video, gaming , radio , and television . Smartphones typically contain a number of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) chips, include various sensors that can be leveraged by pre-installed and third-party software (such as a magnetometer , a proximity sensor , a barometer ,
5088-450: The internet of things (IoT), fixed wireless access , and multimedia streaming (including music, video, radio , and television ). Deployment of fifth-generation ( 5G ) cellular networks commenced worldwide in 2019. The term "5G" was originally used in research papers and projects to denote the next major phase in mobile telecommunication standards beyond the 4G / IMT-Advanced standards. The 3GPP defines 5G as any system that adheres to
5194-599: The screen . Depending on the device's type and design, the screen fills most or nearly all of the space on a device's front surface. Many smartphone displays have an aspect ratio of 16:9 , but taller aspect ratios became more common in 2017. Screen sizes are often measured in diagonal inches or millimeters ; feature phones generally have screen sizes below 90 millimetres (3.5 in). Phones with screens larger than 130 millimetres (5.2 in) are often called " phablets ." Smartphones with screens over 115 millimetres (4.5 in) in size are commonly difficult to use with only
5300-475: The " Pocket PC " versions of what was later Windows Mobile , and the UIQ interface that was originally designed for pen-based PDAs on Symbian OS devices resulted in some early smartphones having stylus-based interfaces. These allowed for virtual keyboards and handwriting input, thus also allowing easy entry of Asian characters. By the mid-2000s, the majority of smartphones had a physical QWERTY keyboard. Most used
5406-495: The 1990s, or lithium-ion batteries used in modern smartphones. The term "smart phone" (in two words) was not coined until a year after the introduction of the Simon, appearing in print as early as 1995, describing AT&T's PhoneWriter Communicator. The term "smartphone" (as one word) was first used by Ericsson in 1997 to describe a new device concept, the GS88 . Beginning in
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#17328633778595512-582: The GSM was used by over 5 billion people in over 220 countries. The GSM (2G) has evolved into 3G, 4G and 5G. The standardization body for GSM started at the CEPT Working Group GSM (Group Special Mobile) in 1982 under the umbrella of CEPT. In 1988, ETSI was established, and all CEPT standardization activities were transferred to ETSI. Working Group GSM became Technical Committee GSM. In 1991, it became Technical Committee SMG (Special Mobile Group) when ETSI tasked
5618-485: The Google Play Store), RIM's BlackBerry App World , or Android-related app stores like Aptoide , Cafe Bazaar , F-Droid , GetJar , and Opera Mobile Store . In February 2014, 93% of mobile developers were targeting smartphones first for mobile app development. As of 2022, the top five manufacturers worldwide were Samsung (21%), Apple (16%), Xiaomi (13%), Oppo (10%), and Vivo (9%). From 1983 to 1998, Motorola
5724-706: The SIM card from one mobile phone and inserting it into another mobile phone or broadband telephony device, provided that this is not prevented by a SIM lock . The first SIM card was made in 1991 by Munich smart card maker Giesecke & Devrient for the Finnish wireless network operator Radiolinja . A hybrid mobile phone can hold up to four SIM cards, with a phone having a different device identifier for each SIM Card. SIM and R-UIM cards may be mixed together to allow both GSM and CDMA networks to be accessed. From 2010 onwards, such phones became popular in emerging markets, and this
5830-421: The UK, the total number of mobile phones overtook the number of houses in 1999. Today, mobile phones are globally ubiquitous, and in almost half the world's countries, over 90% of the population owns at least one. A handheld mobile radio telephone service was envisioned in the early stages of radio engineering. In 1917, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt filed a patent for a "pocket-size folding telephone with
5936-572: The ability to transfer cash payments by secure SMS text message. Kenya's M-PESA mobile banking service, for example, allows customers of the mobile phone operator Safaricom to hold cash balances which are recorded on their SIM cards. Cash can be deposited or withdrawn from M-PESA accounts at Safaricom retail outlets located throughout the country and can be transferred electronically from person to person and used to pay bills to companies. Branchless banking has also been successful in South Africa and
6042-550: The abnormally high traffic. Capacity was further increased when phone companies implemented digital networks. With digital, one frequency can host multiple simultaneous calls. Additionally, short-range Wi-Fi infrastructure is often used by smartphones as much as possible as it offloads traffic from cell networks on to local area networks. The common components found on all mobile phones are: Low-end mobile phones are often referred to as feature phones and offer basic telephony. Handsets with more advanced computing ability through
6148-476: The battery, as well as running different firmware and having different packaging. The Japanese version is available in 3 colors: Copper, White and Black; while only the White and Black were sold elsewhere. Mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area, as opposed to
6254-961: The benefits of different calling plans. For example, a particular plan might provide for cheaper local calls, long-distance calls, international calls, or roaming. The mobile phone has been used in a variety of diverse contexts in society. For example: In 1998, one of the first examples of distributing and selling media content through the mobile phone was the sale of ringtones by Radiolinja in Finland. Soon afterwards, other media content appeared, such as news, video games, jokes, horoscopes, TV content and advertising. Most early content for mobile phones tended to be copies of legacy media , such as banner advertisements or TV news highlight video clips. Recently, unique content for mobile phones has been emerging, from ringtones and ringback tones to mobisodes , video content that has been produced exclusively for mobile phones. In many countries, mobile phones are used to provide mobile banking services, which may include
6360-469: The call, from detecting the presence of a handset in a service area, temporary assignment of a channel to a handset making a call, interface with the land-line side of the network to connect to other subscribers, and collection of billing information for the service. The automation systems can control the "hand off" of a customer handset moving between one cell and another so that a call in progress continues without interruption, changing channels if required. In
6466-399: The clock rate (generally given in multiples of hertz ) but also the memory hierarchy also greatly affects overall performance. Because of these problems, the performance of mobile phone CPUs is often more appropriately given by scores derived from various standardized tests to measure the real effective performance in commonly used applications. One of the main characteristics of phones is
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#17328633778596572-407: The committee with UMTS (3G). In addition to transmitting voice over digital signals, the 2G network introduced data services for mobile, starting with SMS text messages, then expanding to Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), and mobile internet with a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 384 kbit/s (48 kB/s). In 2001, the third-generation ( 3G ) was launched in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on
6678-428: The commuting patterns of Beijing city residents. In the UK and US, law enforcement and intelligence services use mobile phones to perform surveillance operations. Smartphone A smartphone , often simply called a phone , is a mobile device that combines the functionality of a traditional mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access
6784-483: The company announced that it would also exit the hardware market to focus more on software and its enterprise middleware, and began to license the BlackBerry brand and its Android distribution to third-party OEMs such as TCL for future devices. In September 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Nokia's mobile device business for $ 7.1 billion, as part of a strategy under CEO Steve Ballmer for Microsoft to be
6890-435: The concept of frequency reuse allowing many simultaneous telephone conversations in a given service area. This allows efficient use of the limited radio spectrum allocated to mobile services, and lets thousands of subscribers converse at the same time within a given geographic area. Former systems would cover a service area with one or two powerful base stations with a range of up to tens of kilometers' (miles), using only
6996-427: The course of the decade, the two platforms became a clear duopoly in smartphone sales and market share, with BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and other operating systems eventually stagnating to little or no measurable market share. In 2015, BlackBerry began to pivot away from its in-house mobile platforms in favor of producing Android devices, focusing on a security-enhanced distribution of the software. The following year,
7102-462: The device could be used as a digital cellular telephone. In June 1999 Qualcomm released the "pdQ Smartphone", a CDMA digital PCS smartphone with an integrated Palm PDA and Internet connectivity. Subsequent landmark devices included: In 1999, Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo launched i-mode , a new mobile internet platform which provided data transmission speeds up to 9.6 kilobits per second, and access web services available through
7208-415: The earliest mobile phone systems by contrast, all control was done manually; the customer would search for an unoccupied channel and speak to a mobile operator to request connection of a call to a landline number or another mobile. At the termination of the call the mobile operator would manually record the billing information. Mobile phones communicate with cell towers that are placed to give coverage across
7314-474: The early 1990s, IBM engineer Frank Canova realised that chip-and-wireless technology was becoming small enough to use in handheld devices . The first commercially available device that could be properly referred to as a "smartphone" began as a prototype called "Angler" developed by Canova in 1992 while at IBM and demonstrated in November of that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show. A refined version
7420-496: The end of 2009. In 2014, there were more than seven billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, a number that is expected to keep growing. Mobile phones are used for a variety of purposes, such as keeping in touch with family members, for conducting business, and in order to have access to a telephone in the event of an emergency. Some people carry more than one mobile phone for different purposes, such as for business and personal use. Multiple SIM cards may be used to take advantage of
7526-531: The ergonomics associated with smaller 16:9 displays. Liquid-crystal displays are the most common; others are IPS , LED , OLED , and AMOLED displays. Some displays are integrated with pressure-sensitive digitizers, such as those developed by Wacom and Samsung , and Apple's " 3D Touch " system. In sound, smartphones and feature phones vary little. Some audio-quality enhancing features, such as Voice over LTE and HD Voice , have appeared and are often available on newer smartphones. Sound quality can remain
7632-420: The expected usage density, and may be much smaller in cities. In that case much lower transmitter powers are used to avoid broadcasting beyond the cell. In order to handle the high traffic, multiple towers can be set up in the same area (using different frequencies). This can be done permanently or temporarily such as at special events or in disasters. Cell phone companies will bring a truck with equipment to host
7738-486: The first quarter of 2016, the top smartphone developers worldwide were Samsung , Apple and Huawei ; smartphone sales represented 78 percent of total mobile phone sales. For feature phones as of 2016 , the top-selling brands were Samsung, Nokia and Alcatel . Mobile phones are considered an important human invention as they have been one of the most widely used and sold pieces of consumer technology. The growth in popularity has been rapid in some places, for example, in
7844-593: The growth of bandwidth-intensive applications, such as streaming media . Consequently, the industry began looking to data-optimized fourth-generation ( 4G ) technologies, with the promise of speed improvements up to tenfold over existing 3G technologies. The first publicly available LTE service was launched in Scandinavia by TeliaSonera in 2009. In the 2010s, 4G technology has found diverse applications across various sectors, showcasing its versatility in delivering high-speed wireless communication, such as mobile broadband,
7950-466: The iPhone; Palm unveiled a new platform known as webOS for its Palm Pre in late-2009 to replace Palm OS , which featured a focus on a task-based "card" metaphor and seamless synchronization and integration between various online services (as opposed to the then-conventional concept of a smartphone needing a PC to serve as a "canonical, authoritative repository" for user data). HP acquired Palm in 2010 and released several other webOS devices, including
8056-526: The increasing use of smartphones with rapidly improving camera technology for casual photography, easier image manipulation , and abilities to directly share photos through the use of apps and web-based services. By 2011, cell phones with integrated cameras were selling hundreds of millions per year. In 2015, digital camera sales were 35.395 million units or only less than a third of digital camera sales numbers at their peak and also slightly less than film camera sold number at their peak. Contributing to
8162-625: The influence of European companies had significantly decreased due to fierce competition from American and Asian companies, to where most technical innovation had shifted. Apple and Google, both of the United States, also came to dominate mobile phone software. The world's largest individual mobile operator by number of subscribers is China Mobile , which has over 902 million mobile phone subscribers as of June 2018 . Over 50 mobile operators have over ten million subscribers each, and over 150 mobile operators had at least one million subscribers by
8268-533: The legacy BlackBerry OS with a revamped, QNX -based platform known as BlackBerry 10 , with the all-touch BlackBerry Z10 and keyboard-equipped Q10 as launch devices. In 2010, Microsoft unveiled a replacement for Windows Mobile known as Windows Phone , featuring a new touchscreen-centric user interface built around flat design and typography, a home screen with "live tiles" containing feeds of updates from apps, as well as integrated Microsoft Office apps. In February 2011, Nokia announced that it had entered into
8374-414: The local cell and in the adjacent cells. However, cells further away can re-use that channel without interference as the subscriber's handset is too far away to be detected. The transmitter power of each base station is coordinated to efficiently service its own cell, but not to interfere with the cells further away. Automation embedded in the customer's handset and in the base stations control all phases of
8480-535: The main image with a macro focus shot . In 2007 the Nokia N95 was notable as a smartphone that had a 5.0 Megapixel (MP) camera, when most others had cameras with around 3 MP or less than 2 MP. Some specialized feature phones like the LG Viewty , Samsung SGH-G800 , and Sony Ericsson K850i , all released later that year, also had 5.0 MP cameras. By 2010 5.0 MP cameras were common; a few smartphones had 8.0 MP cameras and
8586-526: The mid-to-late 1990s, many people who had mobile phones carried a separate dedicated PDA device, running early versions of operating systems such as Palm OS , Newton OS , Symbian or Windows CE / Pocket PC . These operating systems would later evolve into early mobile operating systems . Most of the "smartphones" in this era were hybrid devices that combined these existing familiar PDA OSes with basic phone hardware. The results were devices that were bulkier than either dedicated mobile phones or PDAs, but allowed
8692-399: The phone and the point of sale support near field communication (NFC). Enabling contactless payments through NFC-equipped mobile phones requires the co-operation of manufacturers, network operators, and retail merchants. Mobile phones are commonly used to collect location data. While the phone is turned on, the geographical location of a mobile phone can be determined easily (whether it
8798-567: The phone close to the ear. The average phone battery lasts two–three years at best. Many of the wireless devices use a Lithium-Ion (Li-Ion) battery, which charges 500–2500 times, depending on how users take care of the battery and the charging techniques used. It is only natural for these rechargeable batteries to chemically age, which is why the performance of the battery when used for a year or two will begin to deteriorate. Battery life can be extended by draining it regularly, not overcharging it, and keeping it away from heat. Mobile phones require
8904-671: The platform such as online shopping. NTT DoCoMo's i-mode used cHTML , a language which restricted some aspects of traditional HTML in favor of increasing data speed for the devices. Limited functionality, small screens and limited bandwidth allowed for phones to use the slower data speeds available. The rise of i-mode helped NTT DoCoMo accumulate an estimated 40 million subscribers by the end of 2001, and ranked first in market capitalization in Japan and second globally. Japanese cell phones increasingly diverged from global standards and trends to offer other forms of advanced services and smartphone-like functionality that were specifically tailored to
9010-518: The rest of the world. Phones that made effective use of any significant data connectivity were still rare outside Japan until the introduction of the Danger Hiptop in 2002, which saw moderate success among U.S. consumers as the T-Mobile Sidekick. Later, in the mid-2000s, business users in the U.S. started to adopt devices based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile , and then BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion . American users popularized
9116-412: The rise in popularity of smartphones being used over dedicated cameras for photography, smaller pocket cameras have difficulty producing bokeh in images, but nowadays, some smartphones have dual-lens cameras that reproduce the bokeh effect easily, and can even rearrange the level of bokeh after shooting. This works by capturing multiple images with different focus settings, then combining the background of
9222-660: The rising popularity of the iPhone in the late 2000s, the majority of smartphones have featured thin, slate-like form factors with large, capacitive touch screens with support for multi-touch gestures rather than physical keyboards. Most modern smartphones have the ability for users to download or purchase additional applications from a centralized app store . They often have support for cloud storage and cloud synchronization, and virtual assistants . Smartphones have largely replaced personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, handheld/palm-sized PCs , portable media players (PMP), point-and-shoot cameras , camcorders , and, to
9328-545: The second-generation ( 2G ) digital cellular technology was launched in Finland by Radiolinja on the GSM standard. This sparked competition in the sector as the new operators challenged the incumbent 1G network operators. The GSM standard is a European initiative expressed at the CEPT ("Conférence Européenne des Postes et Telecommunications", European Postal and Telecommunications conference). The Franco-German R&D cooperation demonstrated
9434-555: The standalone handset can when necessary be inserted into a tablet -sized screen unit with integrated supportive battery and used as such. In 2013 and 2014, Samsung experimented with the hybrid combination of compact camera and smartphone, releasing the Galaxy S4 Zoom and K Zoom , each equipped with integrated 10× optical zoom lens and manual parameter settings (including manual exposure and focus) years before these were widely adapted among smartphones. The S4 Zoom additionally has
9540-542: The task key to simulate a short menu key press, as with home button to search. More recent "bezel-less" types have their screen surface space extended to the unit's front bottom to compensate for the display area lost for simulating the navigation keys. While virtual keys offer more potential customizability, their location may be inconsistent among systems depending on screen rotation and software used. Multiple vendors attempted to update or replace their existing smartphone platforms and devices to better-compete with Android and
9646-401: The technical feasibility, and in 1987, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between 13 European countries that agreed to launch a commercial service by 1991. The first version of the GSM standard had 6,000 pages. The IEEE and RSE awarded Thomas Haug and Philippe Dupuis the 2018 James Clerk Maxwell medal for their contributions to the first digital mobile telephone standard. In 2018,
9752-467: The term "CrackBerry" in 2006 due to the BlackBerry's addictive nature. In the U.S., the high cost of data plans and relative rarity of devices with Wi-Fi capabilities that could avoid cellular data network usage kept adoption of smartphones mainly to business professionals and " early adopters ." Outside the U.S. and Japan, Nokia was seeing success with its smartphones based on Symbian , originally developed by Psion for their personal organisers, and it
9858-484: The time that a touchscreen could not completely replace a physical keyboard and buttons. Android is based around a modified Linux kernel, again providing more power than mobile operating systems adapted from PDAs and feature phones. The first Android device, the horizontal-sliding HTC Dream , was released in September 2008. In 2012, Asus started experimenting with a convertible docking system named PadFone , where
9964-699: The use of native software applications are known as smartphones . The first GSM phones and many feature phones had NOR flash memory, from which processor instructions could be executed directly in an execute in place architecture and allowed for short boot times. With smartphones, NAND flash memory was adopted as it has larger storage capacities and lower costs, but causes longer boot times because instructions cannot be executed from it directly, and must be copied to RAM memory first before execution. Mobile phones have central processing units (CPUs), similar to those in computers, but optimised to operate in low power environments. Mobile CPU performance depends not only on
10070-415: The world population were smartphone users as of 2020. Early smartphones were marketed primarily towards the enterprise market, attempting to bridge the functionality of standalone PDA devices with support for cellular telephony , but were limited by their bulky form, short battery life , slow analog cellular networks, and the immaturity of wireless data services. These issues were eventually resolved with
10176-412: Was attributed to the desire to obtain the lowest calling costs. When the removal of a SIM card is detected by the operating system, it may deny further operation until a reboot. Feature phones have basic software platforms. Smartphones have advanced software platforms. Android OS has been the best-selling OS worldwide on smartphones since 2011. A mobile app is a computer program designed to run on
10282-575: Was demonstrated by Martin Cooper of Motorola in New York City on 3 April 1973, using a handset weighing c. 2 kilograms (4.4 lbs). In 1979, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launched the world's first cellular network in Japan. In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first commercially available handheld mobile phone. From 1983 to 2014, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew to over seven billion; enough to provide one for every person on Earth. In
10388-540: Was followed in 1981 by the simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Several other countries then followed in the early to mid-1980s. These first-generation ( 1G ) systems could support far more simultaneous calls but still used analog cellular technology. In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first commercially available handheld mobile phone. In 1991,
10494-499: Was launched in Finland in 2000, and subsequently many organizations provided "on-demand" and "instant" news services by SMS. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) was introduced in March 2002. The introduction of Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch in July 2008 popularized manufacturer-hosted online distribution for third-party applications (software and computer programs) focused on
10600-401: Was manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric , which integrated features with its own cellular radio technologies. It featured a liquid-crystal display (LCD) and PC Card support. The Simon was commercially unsuccessful, particularly due to its bulky form factor and limited battery life , using NiCad batteries rather than the nickel–metal hydride batteries commonly used in mobile phones in
10706-455: Was market leader in mobile phones. Nokia was the market leader in mobile phones from 1998 to 2012. In Q1 2012, Samsung surpassed Nokia, selling 93.5 million units as against Nokia's 82.7 million units. Samsung has retained its top position since then. Aside from Motorola, European brands such as Nokia, Siemens and Ericsson once held large sway over the global mobile phone market, and many new technologies were pioneered in Europe. By 2010,
10812-435: Was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator . In addition to placing and receiving cellular calls , the touchscreen-equipped Simon could send and receive faxes and emails . It included an address book, calendar, appointment scheduler, calculator, world time clock, and notepad, as well as other visionary mobile applications such as maps, stock reports and news. The IBM Simon
10918-536: Was so high in Japan that the companies did not feel the need to look elsewhere for additional profits. The rise of 3G technology in other markets and non-Japanese phones with powerful standardized smartphone operating systems , app stores , and advanced wireless network capabilities allowed non-Japanese phone manufacturers to finally break in to the Japanese market, gradually adopting Japanese phone features like emojis , mobile payments, NFC, etc. and spreading them to
11024-709: Was succeeded by Satya Nadella (who has placed a larger focus on software and cloud computing) as CEO of Microsoft, it took a $ 7.6 billion write-off on the Nokia assets in July 2015, and laid off nearly the entire Microsoft Mobile unit in May 2016. Prior to the completion of the sale to Microsoft, Nokia released a series of Android-derived smartphones for emerging markets known as Nokia X , which combined an Android-based platform with elements of Windows Phone and Nokia's feature phone platform Asha , using Microsoft and Nokia services rather than Google. The first commercial camera phone
11130-471: Was the Kyocera Visual Phone VP-210 , released in Japan in May 1999. It was called a "mobile videophone" at the time, and had a 110,000- pixel front-facing camera . It could send up to two images per second over Japan's Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) cellular network , and store up to 20 JPEG digital images , which could be sent over e-mail . The first mass-market camera phone was
11236-646: Was the most popular smartphone OS in Europe during the middle to late 2000s. Initially, Nokia's Symbian smartphones were focused on business with the Eseries , similar to Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices at the time. From 2002 onwards, Nokia started producing consumer-focused smartphones, popularized by the entertainment-focused Nseries . Until 2010, Symbian was the world's most widely used smartphone operating system. The touchscreen personal digital assistant (PDA)–derived nature of adapted operating systems like Palm OS ,
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