Types and Usage
A mobile phone, known as a cell phone in North America or hand phone in Asian English, 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.
There are mainly 5 types of Cell Phones.
1. The Classic: Cell Phones
Often referred to as conventional phones or basic phones, cell phones have stuck to their roots of making calls, texts and little else. Conventional phones are intentionally devoid of advanced features and instead focus on ease of use.
2. The New Standard: Smartphones
Smartphones have a number of distinguishing features, like robust operating system (OS), GPS, a robust third-party application marketplace and 4G internet speeds, a smartphone is closer to a computer than a cell phone.
They’ve advanced far beyond simply making calls. 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.
3. Feature phone:
Feature phone 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.
4. The Middle Ground: Feature Phones
Feature phones are a perfect compromise between smartphones and conventional phones. One of the defining marks of a feature phone is that it has a limited proprietary OS, as opposed to the robust operating system of a smartphone. A feature phone’s OS also does not typically allow for third-party applications. In the rare situations that it does, it won’t be able to interact with other functions of the phone.
5. The Camera Phone
A camera phone is similar to a smartphone in many aspects, but the difference is that the camera on the device is better than most point and shoot digital cameras around.
Apart from these types, you will also need to make a decision about the form factor of the device that you buy. You can pick one from amongst the following.
• Full touchscreen.
• Touchscreen with a side-sliding or front-sliding full QWERTY keyboard.
• Full QWERTY keyboard.
• Clamshell design.
• Flip.
• Basic T9 keyboard.
