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What makes a phone a smart phone? I don't think many would argue that the Motorola flip phone I had in the early 2000s was a smart phone, but it had games, a (p

What makes a phone a smart phone? I don't think many would argue that the Motorola flip phone I had in the early 2000s was a smart phone, but it had games, a (primitive) web browser, and of course could text and make calls. When the iPhone came out it was clearly something different from my flip phone. It had a relatively large screen, fast processor, usable web browser, and importantly a flourishing app ecosystem. To me this device resembles my Motorola flip a lot more than it resembles Apple's iPhone. And that's fine, but let's not try to stretch an already nebulous term beyond all recognition.

rowanG077 4y ago
IPhone didn't even have apps when it came out. Your Motorola flip phone was more of a smartphone, feature wise, then the first iPhone.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  Even with the preinstalled apps there were problems. In the first ipod touch and iphone there was a flag set to not be able to create events in the calendar app! (Calendar was read-only). Later updates fixed it but if you had an ipod touch you needed to pay for the update (maybe 15$?).
Waterluvian 4y ago
From my probably faulty memory: “Smartphone” was the first iphone that rendered the “normal” internet. I remember it being huge that you could do that and pinch and zoom rather than use a d pad to walk around a bad render of a webpage.
- nousermane 4y ago
  "Smartphone" was a thing long before first iphone. You're right about rendering normal websites being revolutionary, though. Pretty much all smartphones before that only displayed (relatively rare) WAP/WML sites. Those were pain to both use and make: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol#...
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    Those pages were friggin awesome when I used them in Korea and Japan though. WAP in Japan was way better than the full web on an iPhone in 2008, anyway. I don't think the USA really caught up until 2010 or so
  - usrusr 4y ago
    That wasn't the demarcation line either: late feature phones (when they were already called that, because smartphones were very much a thing already) had surprisingly capable browsers (and Wi-Fi, and GPS, and external memory). I already became a web community addict on my Sony Elm. The difference was all about user-installable apps beyond what was offered by J2ME, since what already felt like eons ago. Post-iPhone that demarcation got muddled a bit by touch-driven UI and the occasional touchscreen feature-phone will be considered a basic "smartphone" by many, but in the historical context when that distinction still mattered it was all about the installables, and J2ME did not count. PS: neighbor poster reminds us that the iPhone at first did not have user installable apps either, I guess that could be seen as muddling my demarcation line even more. But on the other hand the reality was that when it happened, the iPhone was so much a standout that nobody really cared where it would fit in the emerging field of mobile phone classifications, it was just The iPhone. And iirc "smartphone" as a term wasn't quite as established as we like to think it was, the conceptual bound were more clear than the name. When "smartphone" eventually emerged as the definitive shared superclass of iPhones and Android devices it inherited almost accidentally (and there's-an-app-for-that era Apple did not try too hard pointing out that inaccuracy...)
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    I used a PDA for a phone and that was pretty much a smart phone but slightly thicker. I didn't get the hype about the iPhone because all the fancy features it had just seemed to be on my phone already. Mobile websites went through a phase where everything looked like iPhone menus for a while and that was often quite annoying because I was used to just reading normal web pages, even if they were often slow. I think the iPhone made an important change in that it was significantly more powerful (and expensive!) than most phones people used. These devices were out there and they had been for years, but Apple normalised spending ever increasing sums of money on a phone.
numpad0 4y ago
The pre-chasm definition was “phone with an OS(and run apps)”. Common phones before iOS did not have an OS, as in, had no explicit consumer facing branding for its OS.
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- maven29 4y ago
  Likely because of interoperability of J2ME apps between segments and brands? Apps like WhatsApp worked just as well on Nokia's offerings as they would on Sony Ericsson's. On the Nokia side, Symbian S60 vs S40 indicated the distinction, with the former usually implying a ton of first-party features and a native SDK for apps that could offer functionality beyond the J2ME API limitations. Windows Mobile also went through several revisions before we got to 2007. I believe Nokia had a few releases in the PDA form-factor as well, but the only real value-add there was being able to use webpages made for the desktop.
  - nousermane 4y ago
    BlackBerry/bbOS predates iOS & Android, too.
  - lloeki 4y ago
    Palm had a close call. Many Palm OS devices came increasingly really close to a smartphone/iPhone concept and experience, especially when paired with a GPRS phone (over RS232, IRDA). Handspring/Palm Treo (e.g Treo 180g) was probably the closest thing to the iPhone concept on many levels. Had some Palm III, then a Sony Clié SJ30, and finally a Palm LifeDrive, when the iPhone was announced it felt like the most natural evolution (and actually with the first one two steps forward yet a step back because PalmOS had a wonderful app ecosystem)
rl1987 4y ago
I believe at some point the distinction was that smartphones have a separate application processor for user-facing stuff (GUI apps, graphical environment, higher-level network protocols) aside from broadband processor that dealt with signal processing and low-level network protocols. Might not be true anymore.
gwbas1c 4y ago
As someone else stated: "'Smartphone' was a thing long before first iphone." I remember a college friend of mine playing games on his "smartphone" while sitting on the toilet in 2002. (The iPhone came out in 2007.) His phone ran Windows CE, and I think it even had a browser on it. I even remember going out to look at "smartphones" in 2003, and later in 2005, and just being generally disappointed. The one that I looked at in 2003 was too expensive and clunky, (I was a college student on a budget,) and the one that I looked at in 2005 was too hard to figure out how to use. (Windows CE). Ballmer's criticism of the first iPhone was that Microsoft had been shipping almost the same thing on phones with Windows CE for quite a few years. The big difference was the UI: The iPhone was a touchscreen and easy to figure out; Windows CE was difficult to figure out and used a stylus.
- ArekDymalski 4y ago
  Exactly. Before "smartphone" the terms used for handheld mini computers were "Pocket PC" and "PDA". And they were truly impressive in terms od capabilities: they had web browsers, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, music software, games etc. Major pain point - stylus was a must due to interface strongly based on Windows. I miss them though.

rowanG077 4y ago

IPhone didn't even have apps when it came out. Your Motorola flip phone was more of a smartphone, feature wise, then the first iPhone.

mejutoco 4y ago
Even with the preinstalled apps there were problems. In the first ipod touch and iphone there was a flag set to not be able to create events in the calendar app! (Calendar was read-only). Later updates fixed it but if you had an ipod touch you needed to pay for the update (maybe 15$?).

Waterluvian 4y ago

From my probably faulty memory: “Smartphone” was the first iphone that rendered the “normal” internet. I remember it being huge that you could do that and pinch and zoom rather than use a d pad to walk around a bad render of a webpage.

nousermane 4y ago
"Smartphone" was a thing long before first iphone. You're right about rendering normal websites being revolutionary, though. Pretty much all smartphones before that only displayed (relatively rare) WAP/WML sites. Those were pain to both use and make: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol#...
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Those pages were friggin awesome when I used them in Korea and Japan though. WAP in Japan was way better than the full web on an iPhone in 2008, anyway. I don't think the USA really caught up until 2010 or so
- usrusr 4y ago
  That wasn't the demarcation line either: late feature phones (when they were already called that, because smartphones were very much a thing already) had surprisingly capable browsers (and Wi-Fi, and GPS, and external memory). I already became a web community addict on my Sony Elm. The difference was all about user-installable apps beyond what was offered by J2ME, since what already felt like eons ago. Post-iPhone that demarcation got muddled a bit by touch-driven UI and the occasional touchscreen feature-phone will be considered a basic "smartphone" by many, but in the historical context when that distinction still mattered it was all about the installables, and J2ME did not count. PS: neighbor poster reminds us that the iPhone at first did not have user installable apps either, I guess that could be seen as muddling my demarcation line even more. But on the other hand the reality was that when it happened, the iPhone was so much a standout that nobody really cared where it would fit in the emerging field of mobile phone classifications, it was just The iPhone. And iirc "smartphone" as a term wasn't quite as established as we like to think it was, the conceptual bound were more clear than the name. When "smartphone" eventually emerged as the definitive shared superclass of iPhones and Android devices it inherited almost accidentally (and there's-an-app-for-that era Apple did not try too hard pointing out that inaccuracy...)
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I used a PDA for a phone and that was pretty much a smart phone but slightly thicker. I didn't get the hype about the iPhone because all the fancy features it had just seemed to be on my phone already. Mobile websites went through a phase where everything looked like iPhone menus for a while and that was often quite annoying because I was used to just reading normal web pages, even if they were often slow. I think the iPhone made an important change in that it was significantly more powerful (and expensive!) than most phones people used. These devices were out there and they had been for years, but Apple normalised spending ever increasing sums of money on a phone.

numpad0 4y ago

The pre-chasm definition was “phone with an OS(and run apps)”. Common phones before iOS did not have an OS, as in, had no explicit consumer facing branding for its OS.

deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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maven29 4y ago
Likely because of interoperability of J2ME apps between segments and brands? Apps like WhatsApp worked just as well on Nokia's offerings as they would on Sony Ericsson's. On the Nokia side, Symbian S60 vs S40 indicated the distinction, with the former usually implying a ton of first-party features and a native SDK for apps that could offer functionality beyond the J2ME API limitations. Windows Mobile also went through several revisions before we got to 2007. I believe Nokia had a few releases in the PDA form-factor as well, but the only real value-add there was being able to use webpages made for the desktop.
- nousermane 4y ago
  BlackBerry/bbOS predates iOS & Android, too.
- lloeki 4y ago
  Palm had a close call. Many Palm OS devices came increasingly really close to a smartphone/iPhone concept and experience, especially when paired with a GPRS phone (over RS232, IRDA). Handspring/Palm Treo (e.g Treo 180g) was probably the closest thing to the iPhone concept on many levels. Had some Palm III, then a Sony Clié SJ30, and finally a Palm LifeDrive, when the iPhone was announced it felt like the most natural evolution (and actually with the first one two steps forward yet a step back because PalmOS had a wonderful app ecosystem)

rl1987 4y ago

I believe at some point the distinction was that smartphones have a separate application processor for user-facing stuff (GUI apps, graphical environment, higher-level network protocols) aside from broadband processor that dealt with signal processing and low-level network protocols. Might not be true anymore.

gwbas1c 4y ago

As someone else stated: "'Smartphone' was a thing long before first iphone." I remember a college friend of mine playing games on his "smartphone" while sitting on the toilet in 2002. (The iPhone came out in 2007.) His phone ran Windows CE, and I think it even had a browser on it. I even remember going out to look at "smartphones" in 2003, and later in 2005, and just being generally disappointed. The one that I looked at in 2003 was too expensive and clunky, (I was a college student on a budget,) and the one that I looked at in 2005 was too hard to figure out how to use. (Windows CE). Ballmer's criticism of the first iPhone was that Microsoft had been shipping almost the same thing on phones with Windows CE for quite a few years. The big difference was the UI: The iPhone was a touchscreen and easy to figure out; Windows CE was difficult to figure out and used a stylus.

ArekDymalski 4y ago
Exactly. Before "smartphone" the terms used for handheld mini computers were "Pocket PC" and "PDA". And they were truly impressive in terms od capabilities: they had web browsers, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, music software, games etc. Major pain point - stylus was a must due to interface strongly based on Windows. I miss them though.