NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, March 2012
SmartPhone = PDA + Phone, Part 1
By Phil Sorrentino, President,
Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., FL
January 2011 issue, Sarasota PC Monitor
March 2011 issue, The Program
http://www.spcug.org
president (at) spcug.org (click to email author)

Smartphones can be seen all around. Notice the phone being used on your favorite TV show; next time, odds are that it’ll be a smartphone. A year or two ago it was a flip phone (do you remember Jack Bauer on 24 using his?), but no more. Now the phone of choice seems to be the smartphone. Apple, and more recently, Google, have really changed the mobile phone landscape. The iPhone, with its iOS Operating System available only on the iPhone, released in 2009, really started the whole movement. Google, with its Android Operating System (provided for free to hardware phone manufacturers), has come on very strong in the past few months so that iPhones and Android phones now have about the same market share - about 35% each, which only leaves 30% to be shared by Blackberry, Nokia, and Microsoft.

The Smartphone equality, as stated in the title, suggests that the smartphone is equal, in functionality anyway, to a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and a standard mobile phone. PDAs have been a popular way of allowing one to have many of the computer files, pictures, videos and music, available on the go - remember the Palm Pilot. A phone was another necessity for someone who was always on the go. So for someone who had to be mobile and needed access their computer files, a phone and a PDA became a good combination. I carried a PDA for many years and more recently, a PDA and a flip phone. Now I can carry only one device, a smartphone. And, as a welcome side effect, now I only have to make sure one device is charged nightly.

The smartphone is made possible by a number of technologies. Among them are: Capacitive touch-screens; 3G (soon to be 4G) wireless telephone networks; Wi-Fi; GPS; Micro-miniature processors, memory and components; Digital Cameras; and Phone oriented Operating Systems. Some of these technologies are used in phones - like touch screens, networks, small components, Digital cameras, and operating systems. And some are used in PDAs - like touch screens, Wi-FI, small components, and operating systems. As you can see there is a good bit of overlap, so putting it all together was just a natural. But it took the genius of Apple to put it all together and make it work and make it practical and make it cool. And now with the help of Google it has become more practical and popular.

All of the technology for replacing the mobile phone and the PDA is included in the smartphone, and then some. (I didn’t have a good camera in my mobile phone, before.) But, it does take some planning and forethought to make the smartphone do everything. Some of the things to be concerned with are: Contacts, (which are phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses, and related notes); Calendar events; E-mail; Memos, (which are lists of important things); Documents; Spreadsheets; Pictures, Videos, Music; and Browsers. Before you can consider using any of these things there has to be an “App” (Application) installed on your smartphone. (I am using a Motorola Droid2 as an example, but most of what I am referring to will be very similar on another Android smartphone, and even similar for an Apple iPhone.) There are Apps for all of these tasks. In fact there are over 100,000 Apps for Android phones and over 240,000 Apps for iPhones.

So, the first thing to do is to identify an App to handle each task you want accomplished. Your smartphone probably came with a basic collection of Apps. Basic things like Contacts, Pictures, Videos, Music, and Camera will probably be covered by these Apps that were installed at the factory. If not, you can go to the “Market” for Android Apps, or the Apple Store for iPhone Apps, and find one that fits your needs. Many of the Apps at these stores (websites) are free or have a nominal cost, most under $10. Things like Word or PDF Documents, or Excel spreadsheets may have to be handled by an App from one of these stores. Once you get to the App store, you will find a myriad of App titles. You can typically search for “All Apps”, or limit your search to only free ones. You can even search for Games that will run on your smartphone. When you find an App that you want, you will pay for it (via a credit card account that was previously set up) if it is not free, and then it will be downloaded right onto your smartphone. The download is completely controlled from the Market and there is no further action on your part needed. After the App is downloaded and installed, you will receive a message that it is complete. It couldn’t be any easier.

Once an App has been downloaded, it can be placed on the home screen. Actually, one of the home screens. The Droid2 has 7 home screens. Multiple home screens make it easy for you to organize your Apps. Apps that you think work together can be collected on a particular home screen. You could have a home screen for entertainment, one for work, one for family, another for sports. Any organization of Apps that makes sense to you would be appropriate.

Once you’ve organized your home screens and downloaded the Apps needed, I’m sure you’ll see that the smartphone is a very useful device for someone on the go. Future articles will concentrate on some of the new ways of interacting with the touch sensitive screen and some of the smartphone’s more interesting features, but I think you will now agree that: Smartphone = PDA + (not so smart) phone.

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