MMM Smartphone Guide: Types of Smartphones
In this section:
Definition of a SmartphoneLocked and Unlocked SmartphonesQWERTY, Thumbboards, and Other Input Options3rd Party SoftwareDefinition of a Smartphone
There are a number of definitons as to what a smartphone is, but for the purposes of the guide, we will stick to this:
A mobile device with a cellular radio and mainstream operating system that allows for the creation and manipulation of information, has a web browser capable of viewing most websites, and has the ability to download 3rd party software which is developed using advanced programming languges and scripting functions.Using this definition, we can designated smartphones being those phones that utilize the following operating systems: Windows Mobile, Symbian S60, Symbian UIQ, Palm OS, Access Linux, BlackBerry OS, and iPhone OS.
Locked and Unlocked Smartphones
Smartphones fall into two broad categories: locked and unlocked. Locked phones are traditionally sold through carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Orange, Rogers, DoMoCo, etc.) and the softawre and use is locked to that network's use only. Because carriers subsidize the cost of mobile devices, this ability to lock smartphones to their network allows them to recoup the costs of supporting the device.
CDMA phones (Verizon, Sprint-Nextel, Alltel, and a few others) are sold locked to the carrier and network. Until recently, you were not able to take a (for example) Sprint-Nextel phone to the Verizon network and activate it for use on that network. This has now changed. However, CDMA phones are not compatible with GSM networks. 3G for CDMA phones is spoken of in some variant of the term EVDO.
GSM phones (Orange, AT&T, TMobile, DoMoCo, etc.) are usually sold locked if purchased from the...
