Smart Phones: Please Stop Making Me Feel So Dumb. Part 1

Smart phones, the term can actually make you feel pretty dumb when you get one of these bad boys in your hands. The new rage or standard even are smart phones, whether it’s a iPhone, Android, Windows, blackberry or Symbian device. These are all great phones each one has its own unique best quality and they all share the fact that they are fun to use.
Let’s get some confusion out of the way real quick, this information is meant for those of you who aren’t familiar with smart phones. We all are aware of what an iPhone is, its Apples flagship piece of technology that saved the company from what was certainly an impending doom. Androids are any phones that run the Google Smart Phone Operating System(OS), called Android. I always get asked the question “What is the difference between a Droid and an Android”. The answer to this question is simple…there are no differences with operating system whatsoever, a Droid is an Android. Droid happens to be Motorola’s name for their new devices going to Verizon, Droid is also a copyrighted name owned by Lucas Arts. Who would have guessed huh….”These are not the droids you are looking for...” That’s a Star Wars quote for any of you who aren’t a little geeky. Windows Mobile is of course Microsoft’s smart phone mobile OS. If you don’t know what Microsoft or Windows is well then you might be the only person left. Blackberry devices, these are Research In Motion’s (RIM) smart phones. Undoubtedly one of the first best smart phones on the market, RIM has since seen a downfall in sales and popularity…ill touch on that in a few. Symbian devices, this is the one where I confused you all I saw you scratching your heads when I said this earlier. Symbian devices are simply Nokia smartphones pretty simple description for a simple device.
I’m going to cover what seems to be the three favored categories out of these which are the iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries.
Let’s start with iPhones, everyone loves iPhones. For those of you that know me you know I love my Android but I have owned all three of these types of phones. I’ll try and be as non-opinionated as best and I’ll let you decide. iPhones are awesome and everyone wants the newest, fastest, and baddest one. iPhones are manufactured by a little known company that goes by the name of Apple. The iPhone 3Gs runs a 600 megahertz (MHz) processor and has 256 mega bytes (MB) of RAM. The Apple iPhone 4 runs a 1 giga hertz(GHz) processor and 512MB of RAM. What does this mean to you? Well we base the speed of most computers and smart devices on the amount of RAM and processing power they have. You can’t have a lot of processing power and a little bit of RAM or a lot of RAM and little processing speed or else you won’t see a speed increase. After going over the specs of the 3Gs and 4G its safe to say that the 4G is almost twice the phone of the 3Gs. iPhones are incredibly easy to understand, this is their market. You have your choice of the space size you want and the choice of black or white. There is really no difference other than one can hold more and one is white or one is black. I had a 3Gs and the services wasn’t that great and the phone just wasn’t geeky enough for me, but this post isn’t geared toward geeks it’s towards the basic consumer with little technical knowledge. The iPhone has a few drawbacks that make it not so great. Apple approves all of the programs that go into the Apple store, thus making it difficult to get in the store or even beta test. ATT is the only carrier that has the iPhone at the moment. ATT on the east coast is so shoddy I get better reception with tin cups and strings. A real life example of this is …at this very moment I am sitting in a server room in downtown Columbia and have a single bar on my ATT Blackberry. When I had my iPhone in the same place if I held it just right in the most uncomfortable position I got two bars. Now ATT sells a cell booster…but who really wants to pay for that or have to even use it…its 2010 and this isn’t a third world country. Hope is in the future though; Verizon will be offering the iPhone come January. Hate them of love them Verizon has undoubtedly the best network around. I can hear the question now though as I am typing this “Well why can’t I just hook my iPhone up to Verizon now?” ATT and Verizon use two very different wireless technologies, ATT uses GSM and Verizon uses CDMA they are incompatible (Comment and request if you would like to know more about CDMA and GSM Networks). The iPhone does not allow for expansion either, meaning you can’t use that MicroSD card to get more memory. The iPhone also has a sealed battery making it impossible for the typical consumer to get an expanded battery without voiding the warranty. Speaking of warranties another drawback of the iPhone is lack of carrier support, if your phone breaks you have to send it back to Apple or take it to an Apple store(Which are few and far between) to have it serviced. Bottom line, if you want a decent phone that is going to work pretty well, has thousands of apps and a 3 year old can use the iPhone is a great choice.

Stay Tuned for the second part of “Smart Phones: Don’t make me Feel So Dumb”

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