Difference Between Cell Phone and Smartphone

Cell Phone vs Smartphone

手机是一个小工具,已成为indispensable in daily life of everyone from ordinary street urchin to a very busy executive or a business tycoon. A cell phone, also known as mobile phone in many countries, not just frees one from the clutches of wired phones but also offers mobility using which one can stay connected whether he is driving s car, riding a bike or is in a train or an airplane. From the time in 1979 when 1G cellular services were first launched across the city of Tokyo by NTT to the present 4G, mobile telephony has advanced beyond recognition. Cell phone is not just a device to make and receive calls, it has today become a smartphone that has many features that make life easy and entertaining. Though a smartphone is still basically a cell phone as it performs the function of making and receiving calls, there are many differences between a simple cell phone and a smartphone that will be discussed in this article. However, technology is changing rapidly, and what is today a smartphone may become a simple cell phone tomorrow.

Talking of cell phones, they serve the basic purpose of allowing the user to send or receive voice calls and to allow sending and receiving text messages. However, even the most basic of cell phones today have some extra features like a camera that shoots picture and in some cases also makes video clips. There are cell phones with added features like MP3, stereo FM, Bluetooth, instant messenger etc. Some advanced cell phones also make available internet and email facilities upon payment of money to the service provider. Thus there is a great diversity in cell phones in the market with the option to choose one depending upon requirements and of course one’s budget.

With rapidly evolving technology and advancements, more and more features are getting added to cell phones making a separate category of high end mobile phones. But it is certainly tricky to standardize a new category called smartphones by companies and users alike. Though these phones retain the basic feature of making and receiving voice calls, they are bought and used more for their additional features such as advanced computing abilities. These smartphones are smart navigational devices with features of GPS and A-GPS, EDGE, GPRS, have the ability to store a large amount of information and media files, can download and upload files at great speeds on the internet and so on. In fact, these smartphones are more of pocket computers than merely being a cell phone these days. With the introduction of dual core processors and operating systems that are as advanced as those being used in your desktops and laptops, smartphones of today are no less than a full fledged computer that has restricted computing abilities like smaller display and the inability to play a CD or DVD (no DVD writer). However smartphones make up for such deficiencies with twin cameras, ability to play videos, ability to connect to other android devices and allowing the user to see HD videos recorded by their cameras instantly on their TV’s.

Difference Between Cell Phone and Smartphone • Though there is no clear cut definition of a smartphone adopted by the industry, it is assumed that high end cell phones that have additional features like heavy duty processors (single core and now double core), latest operating systems like iOS and Android, digital cameras with provision for HD video recording, GPS with A-GPS, Wi-Fi802.11b/g/n, DLNA, hotspot, Bluetooth (latest version), and so on, are considered as smartphones. • Smartphones are also basically cell phones but the focus is more on additional capabilities than on making and receiving voice calls.