Somehow, defining “smartphone” isn’t as easy as it sounds - or maybe if it’s done too easily, the definition might not be very useful. We’ll be looking at where the smartphone concept comes from, and try to explain how smart your phone really is.

part IX, “Feature phones vs. expandable devices”

How do you define “smartphone”? UIQblog reader borgy had a good definition: you can install programs on the phone, and there are no limits to the kind of programs you can install.

^{The full package - all you need}

So, maybe a java- enabled phone would be clever, since it would be able to do certain smart- phone type tasks - such as connecting to a web- server and complete a particular customised routine. Or provide your Personal Information Management. You would also be able to install your own programs as you’d like. While a smarter phone might be capable of replacing or expanding such things as the integrated browser component, and maybe any capabilities with the program when it comes to rendering video or playing media. Using hardware- based (or future software based) instruction set acceleration. And a real smartphone would be a phone where you could choose your own phone- tools, your own integration framework, and ultimately your own OS.

But as we’ve touched on several times in this never- ending series, the question here is - what is the point of doing so. As someone I shall not name once said: if people had everything they wanted on their phones, why would they want to buy a new one?

It is probably a much better question than it sounds like. If your business is in offering software upgrades that no one else can provide, to a specific platform - and you also know that offering smaller upgrades to those solutions is what makes the phones possible to sell - then why shouldn’t opening up the development and create common apis for add- on possibilities ruin your business?

The same with the ability to replace the OS - why, it would force the phone- maker into providing something compelling to the customers, instead of forcing people to use the phone as they insist they should. And who would want that? Not the customers, surely. If that happened, people would just walk around and say: “oh, well, now there’s no small incremental upgrades to hope for and complain isn’t there, so now I just won’t buy another phone - really, the excitement just went out of the entire business. I’m going to take up stamps instead, and think about sending more written letters (oh, and I’m going to go buy some paper to write on, oh, and a real pen!)”.

On the other hand, while the risk of a booming mail- service at the cost of the mobile industry is definitively real, it is possible that allowing more customisation possibilities will create competition among software developers, more innovative and creative solutions, and so in the end a more compelling product and targeting new markets (such as fashion items, personal planners, gaming devices, walkmans, or recyclable and “green” appeal - instead of just selling the phone as a communications device). This is, after all, what the phone- makers should try to achieve. Instead of making the device into a glorified picture- viewer, and a device where your choices tend to be very limited (and put on a 3d background).

^{Please make a choice}

So, the phone- companies don’t provide much in the way of content, and are widely hated for how they send you advertisements even though you pay them - so where does the entire idea of a feature handset come from?

In short, the idea is the following:

1. The mobile phone maker makes a phone with certain possibilities for customisation.
2. They offer these options to the phone- companies, who are given the opportunity to customise the firmware, and produce a bunch of… a compelling collection of content and content- portals that will help their subscribers get the most out of their phones.
3. Customers, who actually enjoy receiving commercials from their chosen provider, also on the product they’ve bought, are happy to be made aware of the amount of short bad quality mp3 clips they can buy for 3 euro a piece.
4. Therefore, the phone- companies are willing to pay handsomely for inserting exclusive content on the phones they exclusively sell on their networks.

The true irony here is that this business- venture never really paid off for the phone- companies, or created any benefits for the customer. Instead of allowing more customisation of the devices, and more options for the customers of the phones, as well as more money in circulation - be it through businesses, phone- companies or software developers creating their own solutions, and so more use of the services - it resulted in heavy licensing fees, difficult programming conventions, closed and underdeveloped program source and api layers, stagnation, as well as a bad user- experience for the customers.

Many are now proclaiming that this is about to change (and have been for several years). With Web 2.0 - the “mobile web”, and with widgets - the web will finally come to the mobile phone in full. What they are really saying, is that now, finally, it will be so easy for the phone- companies to program their own “widgets”, that they can’t help but run to the phone- manufacturers with a desperate smile and a bag of cash.

That Web 2.0 may also allow other people to write their own twitter- like application for their classmates, or a notification service for the neighborhood that others can subscribe to - and get this easily integrated into the phone’s main UI and notification services - is utterly irrelevant. And certainly will not be part of the calculation for why such a thing was successful (if history is any indication).

But while this reincarnation of the “custom web” fails spectacularly, the reality is that mobile phone companies increasingly couldn’t care less what you’re using the phone for, as long as they earn money off what you do with it. That is, there are more flat rates, customers are willing to pay higher subscription fees for more included services - if you pay your subscription, then that is what matters. Since the phone- companies are also uninterested in making much effort for no real gain (or indeed, any effort at all). And treat phone extras as at best problematic, and at worst a service problem (with extra costs all round) - then why should the phone- manufacturers court the telephone companies in this way, if at all?

#ifdef OGLESLITE
#define VERTTYPE GLfixed
#define VERTTYPEENUM GL_FIXED
#define f2vt(x) ((int)((x)*65536))
#define myglLoadMatrix glLoadMatrixX
#define myglClearColor glClearColorY
#define myglLight glLight
#define myglLightv glLightv
#define myglLightModel glLightModel
#define myglLightModelv glLightModelv
#define myglTexParameter glTexParameter
#else
/**
This space is intentionally left blank. Hello!
*/
#endif

Is it the time to predict the doom of the feature handset just yet, though? Probably not. But the change in how the devices are put together lately is worth mentioning. More and more external companies are hired in to add certain content to the device. Partnerships with companies that provide GPS solutions provide new services to phones that utterly circumvent cell- tower based services, or the ever failing “location based services”. Games are developed “out of house” only to be placed in a bundle with the phone. Which is all done to target specific types of customers, since this (*drumroll*) is where efforts to sell the product are most successful and efficient.

So - it’s possible to describe the split between feature handsets and expandable devices irrespective of the fairly esoteric “smartphone” label. And instead of defining a smart device in terms of whether it’s “possible” to make “programs” for it - we could easily define it in terms of how much programs it’s possible to install on it, and to what degree it is customisable. Or where on the scale between closed content portals and customisable user- panels we are - and if we have exclusively licensed developers, or flourishing independent development due to well- maintained public apis.

next: part X, “Maintaining a product, vs. launching a new version”.