All Phones are equal, just some are more equal than others.

.....it’s the users that make them smart, or the content that’s created for them.

The term smart phone has been around for 10 years now, one of the first phones dubbed with the name was the Nokia 9210 Communicator. It was, for it’s time, a powerful handheld computer with internet access, email, Apps etc, oh and it also made phone calls.
So what defines a Smartphone in 2010? I think most people would agree the following a Smartphone has;
1. The ability to download and extend the phones capabilities with Apps.
2. A more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a basic “feature phone”.
3. A QWERTY keyboard.
4. A touch screen.
5. Unlimited connection to a full, fast, internet browsing experience.

There it is; 5 simple features that define a Smartphone, or is it?

10 years ago Smartphones were defined as having multiple features, such as; email, web browser, camera, and music player, but even the simplest of feature phones now have all these features.

Perhaps then, it’s point one; the ability to extend the phone with Apps. But here again, the Nokia Ovi store and others like it, now extend a huge range of feature phones with the ability to download 3rd party Apps.

So is it point 2; a more advanced computing ability? But with the ever advancing technology, what was a Smartphone 2 years ago, is this year’s feature phone. Many of the most popular “non smart” feature phones are 3G and or wifi, have multi-mega pixel camera’s, can read email, browse the internet and download Apps. Nokia 5230, LG Optimus, Sony Ericsson W995 etc.

OK, may be Smartphones can be defined as having large touch screens. But there is a wealth of budget feature phones that have touch screens, and in any case there are also many QWERTY phones (Blackberry, Nokia) that are very smart that don’t have touch screens. So touch screens can’t be used solely as Smartphone definition.

Finally, may be it’s the always on capability of a full internet experience; but here again, even the iPhone has the weakness of no flash, and the blank screens that appear because of it. Other smart phones have their own browsing limitations when browsing the full desktop internet experience.

Perhaps we need to think beyond “Smartphone” perhaps a new name; mPC or superphone.

There are still big differences between the best Androids / iPhones and the latest feature phones, but there are far more Smartphones than we currently think of.

So maybe rather than thinking of smart phones, we need to educate more smart people, but to do that we need to create smarter content, that’s richer and rewarding, then more people will use more of the features of these great devices.

In terms of mobile internet browsing then, it is more important that the content publishers need to make their content smart, and think of the ever increasing army of users accessing their sites.