Published 2011

The smartphone is currently garnering a wealth of interest and hype, and is without doubt one of the leading electronic devices (with network access) on sale at retailers up and down the UK. The smartphone, as the name suggests, is an advanced 'smarter' model of a conventional mobile phone.

The key features which separate a smartphone from a conventional mobile phone are as follows,

• Plays media files from sites like Youtube.
• Touchscreen with a high resolution.
• Camera.
• Wi-Fi Internet Access.
• Mobile Broadband Internet Access.
• Built-in mobile OS (operating system), such as iOS, Android, MS 7, Symbian.
• Slider keyboard.

The computing and networking capacity of the smartphone is what sets it apart, and which, is, of course, what interests this website. Social networking websites like Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and Facebook have been specifically designed to function with ease on smartphones. The added functionality of users being able to interact with those sites on the move, without the need of a laptop/desktop etc, appears to have fueled the demand for smartphones.

This has been highlighted by a survey conducted in the UK, by Ofcom, in their Communications Market Report. The survey polled over two thousand adults and over five hundred teenagers, it found that nearly half of the teenagers polled, and over a quarter of the adults polled owned a smartphone. The survey further concluded that smartphones were changing how people socialize.

The current market leading smartphone is the Apple’s iPhone, but RIM’s BlackBerry is more popular amongst teenagers.