There are many buzzwords used to promote cellular phones. The two most common terms, however, are smartphones and android phones. But how do the two differ from one another?
Some people get confused when differentiating between smartphones and android phones. Note that all android phones are smartphones, but all smartphones are not android-based.
A smartphone is a handheld electronic device that provides a connection to a cellular network. These devices have been around for some time and their feature set has greatly expanded over time. From a simple set of contacts list, planner, and calendar to video recording, internet browsing, and a lot more.
Android is an operating system and programming platform for mobile phones and other mobile devices. It’s not a specific type of phone but an operating system with the ability to run different devices from different manufacturers.
An Overview of Android Phones
This mobile operating system has been around for years. It’s the primary base operating system of phones and tablets around the world. Also, other operating systems such as Chrome OS and Windows II natively support android applications.
This mobile OS is owned by the search giant Google. But despite that, this system is open source. That makes it freely accessible to everyone, including for commercial use.
Android is the most popular operating system in the world. As of January 2022, Globalstats statcounter placed android in the lead in the mobile OS market.
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Popular Uses of Android Phones
The evolution history of android began in October of 2003 in Palo Alto, California. These devices were founded by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. Rubin first mentioned that android Inc would develop. They were meant to be mobile devices that were more aware of their owner’s location and preferences.
Android has released a lot of versions since its inception. The latest version was android 13 which was released on 15th August 2022. Before that, there was a release of android 12 and android 12L released on March 7th, 2022. Before that, consumers had been graced with a version of android 11 back in September 2020.
When considering how many people use android, note that these devices rank very high in terms of active users in more than 190 countries.
According to the most recent data, android has more than 3 billion active users in 190 countries. In the United States, for instance, it’s expected that android users will surpass 130 million by the end of 2022. This will be a rise from 129.1 million back in 2020.
Since its inception, android phones have evolved to great lengths. This has caused it to become one of the most popular operating systems in the market.
By allowing access to the internet, android users have gotten addicted to social media platforms. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become daily rituals.
In the past, people didn’t install apps on their phones because they didn’t have a play store. But according to android news, their play store has apps that will let you do everything. You can read books, listen to the internet radio, download and play games, and a lot more. That’s not all as most of the apps are free.
That makes it cost-efficient because you can browse and install applications. Android users can also download and use messaging applications like WhatsApp. This has made the entire chat experience much better with emojis and other elements.
One of the best additions to the android OS was Google maps. It’s the most accurate and convenient app. Thanks to it, people are no longer afraid of going to new places. That’s because all they need is an android cellular phone and they are good to go.
Android is the OS of everybody. That’s considering that it has a large number of devices to choose from. This makes it feasible for users to pick a device of their choice according to their budget.
Important Features of Android
- The user interface. The Android user interface is straightforward. This makes it very user-friendly.
- Multiple language support. Android supports multiple languages. As such, users can easily change languages based on their requirements. Some of the international languages supported are English, French, German, Dutch, and Chinese. The native languages of India like Hindi, Punjabi, and Marathi are also supported.
- Multi-tasking. Android provides support to run apps and services in the background. This allows you to run multiple apps at the same time.
- Connectivity. Android has extensive support for connectivity. It supports connectivity such as Bluetooth, WiFi, VPN, 4G network, and 3G network.
- Extensive app support. Android has a play store that’s majorly used to download and update applications. However, a user can download the installer and manually install it. You must, however, note that this is not recommended. That’s because third-party applications are prone to security breaches.
An Overview of Smartphones
Smartphones were first invented in 1992 by IBM and released for purchase in 1994. These devices were not very compact and sleek back then. However, they still feature various elements that have become staples to every smartphone that’s released.
Smartphones are the modern-day solutions to encyclopedias and more. The level of ease that smartphones have brought is inexplicable, and now there are 6.64 billion users worldwide.
Smartphones have a touch-screen that allows you to interact with them. There are also thousands of smartphone applications such as games that are run on these devices. Modern smartphones have various sensors along with onboarding storage.
They’re also equipped with computing and communication capabilities. There has been a growing interest in the deployment of smartphone-based monitoring technologies. That’s especially in the civil engineering arena. Generally, the smartphone sensing paradigm is in its infancy stage with the possibility of expanding its potential apps.
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Popular Uses of Smartphones
- Many people use smartphones to engage with family, friends, and even brands on social media. Social media platforms have mobile apps that users can download from their phone’s app store. The apps make it easy for users to post personal updates and photos while on the go.
- Health and wellness tracking is another popular use for smartphones. A good example is the health app for Ios that keeps track of sleep behavior, nutrition, and mental health exercises.
- Third-party wearable devices like smartwatches can connect to your smartphones. You can then use it to monitor your health statistics like heart rate. That’s because the connection enables it to send information to be aggregated on the phone.
- Mobile payment is also another common use for smartphones. The wallet feature will allow you to save credit card information on your phone when buying at retail stores. An application like Apple pay allows you to pay other iOS users directly from your phone.
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Important Features in Smartphones
Smartphone users will tell you that their connection to the App store is one very important element. But what is an App store? It’s a centralized portal where you can search for and download software apps. The portal has thousands of mobile apps for social media, gaming, productivity, and note-taking.
Below are some of the features of smartphones:
- A mobile browser
- Internet connectivity
- An embedded memory
- A digital camera with video capabilities
- The ability to simultaneously run multiple applications
- The ability to download and independently run applications
- Wireless synchronization with other devices. That includes desktop computers and laptops.
Smartphones often use Liquid Crystal Display screens in their displays. But the OLED displays have become more common in recent years. They are the most preferred by smartphone manufacturers. An LCD is a flat panel display that uses liquid crystals as the primary form of control. It’s also lit with a backlight as pixels are switched on and off electronically.
This happens when using the liquid crystal to rotate polarized light. The polarizing glass filters are placed in front and behind the pixels.
Conclusion
Android and iOS are the most common operating systems for smartphone companies like Samsung, LG, and Huawei, while IPhones use Ios. Blackberry uses Blackberry OS and Nokia Lumia phones use windows phones.
Therefore, android is used as an advanced computational enabler by phone makers. Hence, it’s a fact that android phones are just a subcategory of smartphones.
