Smart Phones Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Smart Phones - Essay Example Smartphones are increasingly important in the modern consumer world, and reports have shown that up to 31% of young people in the UK have a smartphone (Agger, 2011), as well as nearly a quarter of all subscribers in the US. The market is projected to grow over 19% between 2009 and the end of 2011 (Fung, 2010). As well as a growing demand for smartphones in general, the technology that the smartphone boasts has become increasingly important, with many people desiring the best and latest technology (Agger, 2011). Many phones continually upgrade both their hardware and operating system, with larger screen size and better processors being two of the most important aspects of the modern smartphone (Fung, 2010). Smartphones typically have touchscreens, as seen in the very first smartphone (the IBM Simon) as well as the most popular Android and iOS (iPhone) models (Agger, 2011), although Blackberry and other manufacturers do continue to use the standard QWERTY keyboard (Wong, 2010). One of the most important emerging technologies in the smartphone market is the availability of GPS and related applications. The main difference between a smartphone and a computer is portability, and the benefits of this are reaped through GPS technology. GPS, or Global Positioning System, allows a user to very precisely pinpoint their location, allowing many smartphone users to double-up their phone as a satellite navigation system for their car. Another important aspect of this GPS technology is the increasing use of check-in applications such as FourSquare, which can be used to record ones location and broadcast it to friends and local users (Agger, 2011). This technology is widely open to abuse, but is increasingly popular, with around a fifth of smartphone users noting that they have checked in using this software in the past (Wong, 2011). Another important part of smartphone ownership is the use of Twitter, which broadcasts short ‘blogs’, sometimes with a location usin g GPS technology, using the same amount of characters as a standard SMS message. This is true integration of phone and internet technology. Each of the available operating systems have their own benefits and each of them varies in popularity internationally (Agger, 2011). Probably the most famous is Apple’s iOS, which runs on the various iPhones available on the market. Apple is considered to be a particularly groundbreaking and innovative company, and this is reflected in the technology displayed in their mobile phones. Google, one of the largest multinational companies in the world, is one of the more recent evolutions in software and is far more open-source than the competition (Wong, 2011). Open-source operating systems have been growing in demand in recent years (Kennedy, 2010), and Android offers software developers ample chance to develop and market applications for their phones. This is considered one of the main reasons why the Android OS is now the most popular in t he smartphone market in many countries (Wong, 2011). Symbian is the OS found on Nokia handsets, and was the market leader for some time, although it is currently