Talk:Smartphone

Bounding the technology

A while back, I was developing a handheld device for medical transcription, which looked like a small dictating machine, but was actually a computer that digitized and stored the voice dictation, and then sent it, via wireless, to a server. The handheld did have a small touch-screen display. It had a speaker or earphone, so the user could verify the dictation.

It happened the voice file was transferred to a database, and then downloaded to the transcriptionist. There is absolutely no reason why, however, the server couldn't have a VoIP interface attached, dial a phone number, and pass the audio over the sound system.

Thinking about it, there really was no necessity that the handheld store the voice information and then transfer it, other than that some doctors like to review and edit what they said. If I had it transmit directly to the server, and receive voice from the server, and the server could connect to the telephone network, was the dictating device, called such, a smartphone?

The ability to store and forward a voice recording (in what format, by the way?) in no way implies, to me, that a device has the technology needed to provide a real-time connection via VOIP technology to the Public Switched Telephone Network, so I'm a little confused by this line of reasoning.Pat Palmer 00:15, 22 July 2008 (CDT)

This is not idle commentary, as there is a great deal of both convergence of communications, as well as moving communications and computing functions onto different physical platforms. Sometimes, the only difference between "platforms" is a name made up by marketing, such as calling a device that does routing a "layer 3 switch".

In this case, what differentiates a smartphone from another computing device of the same size and the same human interface? The human interface sounds reasonably general-purpose.

For the record, I do sometimes use "smartphone", but when I use the terminology, I'm generally referring to a VoIP telephone that lets the user select the function of certain soft keys, so the functions that user needs most often -- whether one-touch dialing of a specific number, retrieving voicemail, or conference calling -- is set up for maximum user convenience.

Howard, am I missing something? VOIP (packetized telephony) is a completely different technology than a cellular phone. When people talk about "smartphone" in my experience, they are talking about cell phones with rich features, NOT any kind of VOIP gadget or "softphone", as a software-only VOIP telephony program might be called.Pat Palmer 00:21, 22 July 2008 (CDT)

Cisco speaks of softphones and smartphones, but I'd swear I have heard them describing the desk telephones, running VoIP, having a small display and at least soft keys, "Smartphones". I'm thinking especially of using them as transaction terminals.

I'm starting work with a project that, aside from doing specialized environmental and marine navigation things, may do telephony. The telephony interface, doing things like call transfer, text messaging, video, etc., should be able to be constant if the means of connectivity to the PSTN is WLAN, GSM and more recent cellular telephony, satellite radio/telephony, and, within bandwidth limits, VHF radio. Howard C. Berkowitz 01:00, 22 July 2008 (CDT)

In other words, I read the article as saying "here are some things that some devices that some people call smartphones" do. I don't understand what qualifies a device -- or rejects a device -- as a smartphone. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:52, 21 July 2008 (CDT)

Howard, I agree that "smartphone" is not a completely precise term. I think the presence of a camera, the ability to act as a modem, and the presence of an operating system that developers can write new apps for, are distinguishing features. It's a spectrum, however, with some phones being "dumber" (having less or poorer implemented features) and others "smarter" (having better and/or more features). If you think the article would benefit from being worded differently, just wade in.Pat Palmer 00:10, 22 July 2008 (CDT)

As far as a better wording, I'd encourage suggestions on first describing the scope of user experiences that might make up a smartphone. In the comments above, video could well be one, but modem is just one more means of transmission (given that the voice might be digitized anyway.

OS is a tricky area. I've dealt with some medical applications in handhelds, and very quickly learned that having Windows available was a bad thing -- not because of Microsoft doing anything bad, but the potential end users have on putting on more applications. We are talking, after all, about things that, by modern standards, are resource constrained. When some doctor put his stock market application on his dictating machine, the two crashed -- two real-time applications, where capacity wsn't worked out, is asking for trouble.Howard C. Berkowitz 01:00, 22 July 2008 (CDT)

not the latest, but an interesting source

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/02/05/iphone-owns-28-percent-of-us-smartphone-market