A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary basic 'feature phone'.Smartphones and feature phones may be thought of as handheld computers integrated within a mobile telephone, but while most feature phones are able to run applications based on platforms such as Java ME or BREW, a smartphone allows the user to install and run more advanced applications based on a specific platform. Smartphones run complete operating system software providing a platform for application developers.
Growth in demand for advanced mobile devices boasting powerful processors, abundant memory, larger screens and open operating systems has outpaced the rest of the mobile phone market for several years. According to a study by ComScore, in 2010 over 45.5 million people in the United States owned smartphones and it is the fastest growing segment of the mobile phone market.
Operating systems
Operating systems that can be found on smartphones like Nokia's Symbian OS, Apple's IOS, RIM's BlackBerry OS, Microsoft's Windows Phone OS, Linux, Palm WebOS, Google's Android, Samsung's Bada (operating system) and Nokia's Maemo. Android, Bada, WebOS and Maemo are in turn built on top of Linux, and the iPhone OS is derived from the BSD and NeXTSTEP operating systems, which all are related to Unix.