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?

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.

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)