Its a smartphone. It has wifi. It has email, apps like shazaam, fring, It can multi-task which the iphone can't. It has native flickr integration. A pretty good web browser if you install Opera mini.
It is a smart phone. Albeit an aging one, but a smartphone nonetheless. I don't get why you Americans have a bitterness towards Nokia. You don't even count Symbian, which is the most used smartphone OS, in your smartphone graphs and all.
@Cynical Hippie symbian is a perfectly capable OS.. it's just that the definition of a smartphone is still rather hazy (as is the difference between mist and fog) so it is often common to judge an OS on it's looks and "pizazz" rather than just it's functionality, such is the case with winmo, it is perfectly functional as a platfrom, just.. boring.
@Cynical Hippie With you on this one.. 'Pretending to be smartphone'?? The basic task a smartphone should do is multitask which symbian has been doing since 7650(circa 2002?) Don't get why Symbian is being neglected in the US :(
@Cynical Hippie There is not much wrong with third edition. It's just not as advanced as iPhone or Android so that's why everyone puts it down most of the time. However, like most operating systems, it needs some improvements.
@Cynical Hippie It's not just americans that are tireing of the dreadful and ancient Symbian OS. I'm from the EU and I still use my N95 as my daily phone.
But seriously, that phone is 3+ years old. In gadget years that can be multiplied by 7 to get human years, just like with dog years. =)
To realease a "new" phone today, with a 0.4 inch SMALLER screen, completely devoid of even a resistive touchscreen.
And BTW multitasking my grandmother, with 20MB free RAM after boot up there really is only room for two or three apps at the time, and crashing is a daily occurance. It just taught me NOT to multitask on symbian 3rd.
@Ravi: multi-tasking alone isn't enough to warrant a smartphone badge - SE's 'dumb-phones' can multi-task but they clearly aren't smartphones. Not to mention, one rather popular fruit-flavoured smartphone that is incapable of such a feat.
The definition has to be connected in some way to the platform having a well-defined SDK and supporting installable apps.
@Cynical Hippie I agree, the hate seems undeserved. This has Ovi store - remember when the iPhone first came out with web apps over 2G / wifi and no app store and people were debating whether it counted as a smartphone?
Plus the price won't be $183 if ever released in the US.
@Wil2Win What do you mean not s advanced as iphone
It allows skype calls over 3G way before the iphone could. Has a barcode reader. Has fring, skype, cellular modem, infra red remote. And multi tasks.
It does everything the iphone can. All it doesn't share is a touchscreen and accelerometer and you say the iphone is a smarter os? Symbian is still a better OS than iphone. Just cause its hip, doesn't mean the rest is shit.
@Cynical Hippie Agreed. Touch screen is not the only requirement to make it a smartphone. Besides it makes perfect sense to me. Nokia has received a lot of heat for its S60v5 implementation, which is being corrected through Symbian^3 for short term and Symbian^4 for the long run.
Before that, S60v3 was praised as a great SMARTPHONE OS, before touch screens were widely spread. So, why not take a step back, keep creating value, maintain a mind share and then come back with the revamped OS that should have been since the start?
I think all the Ovi strategy is a smart move, with messaging, maps, and online sync. Now carriers have Blackberry mail AND Nokia Messaging data plans. How is that not a great move to maintain mind share?
Nokia has been much more than just OS, unlike android, that is JUST about the OS. It has great tech support, for example. Apple on the other hand has created an ecosystem that sucks you right into it and make YOU accomodate to their beat. Nokia is trying to play along the likes of Balckberry or the glory days of WinMo, but with today's reality.
And they're doing it on the open and on the fly, they won't have theatrical releases like those that apple can afford. Don't get me wrong, it'd be great to be able to work behind the courtains, but they're already out there, so they have to do it without any privacy.
I'm becoming a Nokia fanboy, I know, it's just that i like to support underdogs (of some kind) that really sweat it to succeed.
@Step666 I get multi-tasking isn't enough. But it has skype, fringe, applications and email waaaay before the iPhone did. But then you have posts like these which are so hateful against Nokia.
I see lifehacker having smartphone OS comparisons, where they have web os, android, but don't consider Symbian, which is the most widely used OS. They have small market shared like webOS, but nokias Maemo and Meego isn't cdonsidered.
I get Maemo is the underdog, but Symbian is the champ, yet it isn't even considered and mocked for no reason
Definition doesn't need to be corrected as long as it's "Smartphone is a device which you can install *native* applications and multitask them", as it really is.
They're the big non-perceptual stagnant elephant of an entity if any, refusing to hear their customers pleads and listen to the markets signal. Completely failing to innovate anything groundbreaking since 2007 with the N95. If they're considered underdog today, they put themselves there.
"The N97 will be a flasgship success" - talk about delusion. Lets take 3 years old hardware, stick it in a 10 year old OS with lipstick on and see it hurl over itself all day.
I say, you can put lipstick on a symbian, but its still symbian.
@Cynical Hippie I totally agree. Multitasking should be the first thing in a "smartphone" definition. Symbian still rules the worldwide market with over 40% market share. If anything should not be called a "smartphone" it's the iPhone (a shiny-flashy UI dose not make it "smart"). Symbian 60 is a great little OS, and dose it's duties well. All in all, I really don't understand why Nokia isn't stepping forward rather than putting and older OS on a new phone. It has the means...
@kozjegyzo it's not about the market share they have now, it is about the market share they will have in the FUTURE. and seeing as symbian is rapidly declining it should be a means of worry for nokia.. however they appear to be ignoring the problem, which is probably the worst thing they could possibly do.
@MrMusic Of course they put themselves in that position (as underdogs), just as Motorola or Palm or WinMo did. The ones with an edge right now are Apple and Google, both of which they JUST got to the mobile business.
All the aging players had a momentum since the early 2000's really hard to stop. It was not an issue of "listening" to their customers, because their customers didn't even know what the next big thing was going to be like. Enter iphone, changing the pace, with no weight on it's shoulders, coming up with something not even the consumers saw coming. Nokia, Moto, SE, WinMo, all were too monstrous to put both feet on the brakes. Only google could sniff it miles away and hop along.
Where's Moto now? hopping on the Android wagon, Where's Palm? trying to push a great OS with no muscle left from the old days, Where's SE now? still looking where to turn, cause their brand strategy and pride don't allow them to adopt Android (actually they're waiting for Symbian^3 like a summer rain). The only "giant" really moving and changing course is Nokia. But they are so heavy, that changing course is a monstrous task on its own.
@Cynical Hippie Believe me, I know this. I've been dealing with Symbian & Nokia since I was 13(mind you, I am currenly 18). In fact, I own a Nokia 3710 fold & 5230 Express. Alll I was saying was Symbian S60 gets overlooked because most people think it's not as polished as the Iphone OS. They don't know it's true potential; they're only going by word of mouth, not actual experience.
@Wil2Win Omg, what a load of hogwash. I have had symbian since my 3210. That was back in 1999. You were 7 years old back then. Don't preach to me about experience in regards to tech.
I am squarely judging them by their performance since then, and since N95, nothing innovative has left the doors of Nokia. I still use it just because I have to. And believe me.... it's a daily pain! That is my experience.
@glenskey Nokia is building the MeeGo platform for the highest end, and Symbian is beeing revamped too. In the meanwhile they just offer what they have at an affodable price. Remember that n96 had more or less same specs and OS and it was a flagship device (500 euros). Now you can get have the same in the 180 euro range (be sure in one month will be 150 euros).
@Wil2Win IMHO Symbian isn't polished but (and I've owned about half a dozen Nokias). If anything polish is the think Symbian lacks more than anything. It's functional, as people have mentioned it can do almost anything the iPhone does. The problem is it's often a pain to do it be it the slow navigation, menus here there and everywhere or cumbersome and too varied a methods to getting applications onto the device to begin with. I mean they have like three different PC suites in circulation and with the new Nokia Messaging they now have two different methods on the device to collect emails and the like too. Nothing is very streamlined at all.
Symbian certainly is a smartphone OS but it can be a real pain to use it. It's also a pretty unfun OS to use IMHO. Certainly I don't think you pull a Nokia out and have people want to have a play on the thing.
Still, good to see them put it on cheaper devices and we can only hope they get the entire ecosystem cleaned up soon for future releases.
@Cynical Hippie : Precisely. S60 is a smartphone OS. Always has been. Isn't going to change, unless Nokia for some reason withdraws the ability to develop apps for it. That America only adopted smartphones when they got touchscreens and QWERTY doesn't somehow change the definition the rest of the world uses. This'll run the same apps and do the same cloud synchronisation and podcast fetching and Flickr uploading that the E72 does. It's a low-end smartphone, but it's still a smartphone.
@MrMusic : Try getting a more modern device. My N79 has about 60MB of free RAM on boot and it only crashes when I start screwing around with less-than-approved software.
@Cynical Hippie: I'm not arguing with you, I agree that the C5 should be a described as a smartphone as S60 is, without doubt, a smartphone OS. I'm just pointing out that multi-tasking is not the acid test.
How many modern smartphone OSes out there that can not multi-task, so "multi-tasking is not the acid test" for smartphone OSes? Oh come on, excluding multi-tasking from smartphone definition is only an excuse for the fruit phone!
@MrMusic ... 3210 isn't symbian. The first symbian phone from nokia was the 7650. The second was the 3650. They were released in 2002 and 2003, respectively.
Nokias lower end feature phones don't have symbian. Never did. What we do see, though, is that they're pushing lower end smartphones like this firmly into cheap-ish phone category. Because €135 for a phone puts it squarely into mid-low end phone category.
@GeceBekcisi: or to look at it another way, the inclusion of multi-tasking in the definition is just an attempt to exclude the iPhone
I'm not trying to make excuses for the iPhone but, lets be honest, it's far more a smartphone than a lot of other handsets that do support multi-tasking. The afore-mentioned SE 'dumb-phones' running on the A200 platform, as well as the likes of the Samsung Jet and other devices running the same OS (I believe it's called NucleOS) or any of LG's 'S-Class' feature-phones. They all multi-task but none of them are smartphones.
I get the impression you don't know anything about Symbian or at least the technical side of it. You don't know what OS your phone had 10 years ago or how good a success for example N97 was (not talking about SW of HW success, only sales).
I also want to express my annoyance to the writer of this story. It seems you don't trust your writing skill enough to just let the facts speak for themselves? I found your story to be biased and full of "humor" which really wasn't required. Care to explain for example why this Nokia is only "smart" phone and not a smart phone. No touchscreen? I don't want a freaking touchscreen on my smart phone.
Is there a way to exclude writers too here in engadget?
"the inclusion of multi-tasking in the definition is just an attempt to exclude the iPhone"
If the smartphone term was invented and discussed after iPhone, yes, I'd agree with you. But the term was defined (with first widely sold devices labeled as smartphones) ~5 years before iPhone was launched. I hope you get my point here.
"They all multi-task but none of them are smartphones."
I know, that's why I said "install native applications and multitask them" above and stressed on "native". I strongly think that draws a clear line between featurephones and smartphones.
BTW with this definition, jailbroken and multitasking enabled iPhone is a smartphone, while factory default iPhone is not.
@GeceBekcisi: so you're saying that definitions cannot adapt to meet as new technologies/products/etc are invented? If that were true, then to follow on from mrqs' analogy, the Tesla Roadster would not be considered a car because the definition would specify it as a vehicle which, amongst other things, had an internal combustion engine. Clearly though, that isn't the case any more and any such definition would be obsolete.
The world changes, lines get blurred and definitions need to be refined so that they are still relevant. The iPhone's app support sets it apart from any feature-phone, so why shouldn't it be deemed a smartphone?
I don't personally remember there being much debate on what a smartphone was 5 years ago, so I'm not sure that the definition you seem to subscribe to was ever agreed upon in any way. At the time there was such a gulf between top-end devices and everything else that there were any number of characteristics that could be deemed to be the mark of a smartphone - e-mail support, superior web-browsing, features such as wi-fi and yet none of these define a smartphone any more, so why should multi-tasking?
You might also be interested to read that multi-tasking is not mentioned once on the smartphone page Wikipedia, so perhaps that caveat isn't as widely agreed-upon as you believe (and yes, I know Wikipedia is not a perfect source and no I didn't just edit the page, I honestly wouldn't know how - I actually believe it's quite surprising that multi-tasking isn't mentioned in the slightest).
what the tesla roadster did was replacing the ic engine with an electrical engine what did the iphone replace multitasking with? ui performance performance that's already there in feature phones that do multitasking
in this analogy, the bicycle is able to carry more of your luggage than the car, and while not the only point, that surely is one of the main advantages of a car over a bicycle
can you name a device that everyone would agree is a smartphone that does any one thing (well, apart from battery life) worse than a device everyone would agree is a dumb/feature phone?
"so you're saying that definitions cannot adapt to meet as new technologies/products/etc are invented?" Nope, If we had lots of single-tasking SP OSes, that'd be OK but I defend that this definition shouldn't bent only for one device/OS.
"The world changes, lines get blurred and definitions need to be refined so that they are still relevant." Yes, surely. But as I stated above, one device/OS is not enough to fix what's not broken yet.
"The iPhone's app support sets it apart from any feature-phone, so why shouldn't it be deemed a smartphone?" Why shouldn't we call iPhone as "smart mediaphone"? That fits better than any other term IMO.
"I don't personally remember there being much debate on what a smartphone was 5 years ago, so I'm not sure that the definition you seem to subscribe to was ever agreed upon in any way." You're right, there was nothing to debate because all smartphones at that time were sharing this common set of features (which weren't available on non smartphones): Native apps + multitasking. That's my reason to choose them as the definition itself and these are still present in all smartphones, except a smartphone wanna be mediaphone.
"You might also be interested to read that multi-tasking is not mentioned once on the smartphone page Wikipedia, so perhaps that caveat isn't as widely agreed-upon as you believe" Yes, I noticed Wikipedia doesn't mention that (I've had similar discussions before as you might guess) and I believe the reason for that is iPhone wasn't out then and so nobody was discussing if multitasking was a definitive part of smartphones or not since it was already present in every smartphone, and after iPhone launched simply no one didn't add that or definition benders deleted it, I dunno.
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What's wrong with S60 3rd edition?
Its a smartphone. It has wifi. It has email, apps like shazaam, fring, It can multi-task which the iphone can't. It has native flickr integration. A pretty good web browser if you install Opera mini.
It is a smart phone. Albeit an aging one, but a smartphone nonetheless. I don't get why you Americans have a bitterness towards Nokia. You don't even count Symbian, which is the most used smartphone OS, in your smartphone graphs and all.
Touchscreen does not equal smartphone
/end rant
@Cynical Hippie And free offline navigation
@Cynical Hippie
True.
I would add multitasking to the smartphone definition way before touchscreen.
@Cynical Hippie symbian is a perfectly capable OS.. it's just that the definition of a smartphone is still rather hazy (as is the difference between mist and fog) so it is often common to judge an OS on it's looks and "pizazz" rather than just it's functionality, such is the case with winmo, it is perfectly functional as a platfrom, just.. boring.
@Cynical Hippie With you on this one..
'Pretending to be smartphone'??
The basic task a smartphone should do is multitask which symbian has been doing since 7650(circa 2002?) Don't get why Symbian is being neglected in the US :(
@Cynical Hippie There is not much wrong with third edition. It's just not as advanced as iPhone or Android so that's why everyone puts it down most of the time. However, like most operating systems, it needs some improvements.
@Cynical Hippie
It's not just americans that are tireing of the dreadful and ancient Symbian OS.
I'm from the EU and I still use my N95 as my daily phone.
But seriously, that phone is 3+ years old. In gadget years that can be multiplied by 7 to get human years, just like with dog years. =)
To realease a "new" phone today, with a 0.4 inch SMALLER screen, completely devoid of even a resistive touchscreen.
And BTW multitasking my grandmother, with 20MB free RAM after boot up there really is only room for two or three apps at the time, and crashing is a daily occurance. It just taught me NOT to multitask on symbian 3rd.
errr, just so you know.. that precipitation pun in there was completely unintentional, i would take it back if i could...
@Ravi
Interesting, that is also about the same time Symbian OS stopped evolving too right?
*drum hit*
@Ravi: multi-tasking alone isn't enough to warrant a smartphone badge - SE's 'dumb-phones' can multi-task but they clearly aren't smartphones.
Not to mention, one rather popular fruit-flavoured smartphone that is incapable of such a feat.
The definition has to be connected in some way to the platform having a well-defined SDK and supporting installable apps.
@Cynical Hippie I agree, the hate seems undeserved. This has Ovi store - remember when the iPhone first came out with web apps over 2G / wifi and no app store and people were debating whether it counted as a smartphone?
Plus the price won't be $183 if ever released in the US.
@Wil2Win What do you mean not s advanced as iphone
It allows skype calls over 3G way before the iphone could. Has a barcode reader. Has fring, skype, cellular modem, infra red remote. And multi tasks.
It does everything the iphone can. All it doesn't share is a touchscreen and accelerometer and you say the iphone is a smarter os? Symbian is still a better OS than iphone. Just cause its hip, doesn't mean the rest is shit.
@Cynical Hippie Agreed. Touch screen is not the only requirement to make it a smartphone. Besides it makes perfect sense to me. Nokia has received a lot of heat for its S60v5 implementation, which is being corrected through Symbian^3 for short term and Symbian^4 for the long run.
Before that, S60v3 was praised as a great SMARTPHONE OS, before touch screens were widely spread. So, why not take a step back, keep creating value, maintain a mind share and then come back with the revamped OS that should have been since the start?
I think all the Ovi strategy is a smart move, with messaging, maps, and online sync. Now carriers have Blackberry mail AND Nokia Messaging data plans. How is that not a great move to maintain mind share?
Nokia has been much more than just OS, unlike android, that is JUST about the OS. It has great tech support, for example. Apple on the other hand has created an ecosystem that sucks you right into it and make YOU accomodate to their beat. Nokia is trying to play along the likes of Balckberry or the glory days of WinMo, but with today's reality.
And they're doing it on the open and on the fly, they won't have theatrical releases like those that apple can afford. Don't get me wrong, it'd be great to be able to work behind the courtains, but they're already out there, so they have to do it without any privacy.
I'm becoming a Nokia fanboy, I know, it's just that i like to support underdogs (of some kind) that really sweat it to succeed.
@Step666 I get multi-tasking isn't enough. But it has skype, fringe, applications and email waaaay before the iPhone did. But then you have posts like these which are so hateful against Nokia.
I see lifehacker having smartphone OS comparisons, where they have web os, android, but don't consider Symbian, which is the most widely used OS. They have small market shared like webOS, but nokias Maemo and Meego isn't cdonsidered.
I get Maemo is the underdog, but Symbian is the champ, yet it isn't even considered and mocked for no reason
@Step666
Definition doesn't need to be corrected as long as it's "Smartphone is a device which you can install *native* applications and multitask them", as it really is.
@Eclectico69
Nokia? Underdog?
They're the big non-perceptual stagnant elephant of an entity if any, refusing to hear their customers pleads and listen to the markets signal. Completely failing to innovate anything groundbreaking since 2007 with the N95. If they're considered underdog today, they put themselves there.
"The N97 will be a flasgship success" - talk about delusion.
Lets take 3 years old hardware, stick it in a 10 year old OS with lipstick on and see it hurl over itself all day.
I say, you can put lipstick on a symbian, but its still symbian.
@Cynical Hippie I totally agree. Multitasking should be the first thing in a "smartphone" definition. Symbian still rules the worldwide market with over 40% market share. If anything should not be called a "smartphone" it's the iPhone (a shiny-flashy UI dose not make it "smart").
Symbian 60 is a great little OS, and dose it's duties well. All in all, I really don't understand why Nokia isn't stepping forward rather than putting and older OS on a new phone. It has the means...
@kozjegyzo
"All in all, I really don't understand why Nokia isn't stepping forward rather than putting and older OS on a new phone. It has the means..."
S60 doesn't have any non-touch UI except v3 and Symbian^3 isn't ready yet.
@Cynical Hippie
**blares two large cymbals together**
Wake up! It's 2010! The world has moved on!
Mention Fring and skype again and I'll just say 20MB RAM every post I make in this discussion just because " I ar in ur thread maekin mah point."
@kozjegyzo it's not about the market share they have now, it is about the market share they will have in the FUTURE. and seeing as symbian is rapidly declining it should be a means of worry for nokia.. however they appear to be ignoring the problem, which is probably the worst thing they could possibly do.
@MrMusic Of course they put themselves in that position (as underdogs), just as Motorola or Palm or WinMo did. The ones with an edge right now are Apple and Google, both of which they JUST got to the mobile business.
All the aging players had a momentum since the early 2000's really hard to stop. It was not an issue of "listening" to their customers, because their customers didn't even know what the next big thing was going to be like. Enter iphone, changing the pace, with no weight on it's shoulders, coming up with something not even the consumers saw coming. Nokia, Moto, SE, WinMo, all were too monstrous to put both feet on the brakes. Only google could sniff it miles away and hop along.
Where's Moto now? hopping on the Android wagon, Where's Palm? trying to push a great OS with no muscle left from the old days, Where's SE now? still looking where to turn, cause their brand strategy and pride don't allow them to adopt Android (actually they're waiting for Symbian^3 like a summer rain). The only "giant" really moving and changing course is Nokia. But they are so heavy, that changing course is a monstrous task on its own.
@Cynical Hippie Believe me, I know this. I've been dealing with Symbian & Nokia since I was 13(mind you, I am currenly 18). In fact, I own a Nokia 3710 fold & 5230 Express. Alll I was saying was Symbian S60 gets overlooked because most people think it's not as polished as the Iphone OS. They don't know it's true potential; they're only going by word of mouth, not actual experience.
@Wil2Win
Omg, what a load of hogwash.
I have had symbian since my 3210. That was back in 1999.
You were 7 years old back then. Don't preach to me about experience in regards to tech.
I am squarely judging them by their performance since then, and since N95, nothing innovative has left the doors of Nokia. I still use it just because I have to. And believe me.... it's a daily pain! That is my experience.
@glenskey Nokia is building the MeeGo platform for the highest end, and Symbian is beeing revamped too.
In the meanwhile they just offer what they have at an affodable price.
Remember that n96 had more or less same specs and OS and it was a flagship device (500 euros). Now you can get have the same in the 180 euro range (be sure in one month will be 150 euros).
@Wil2Win IMHO Symbian isn't polished but (and I've owned about half a dozen Nokias). If anything polish is the think Symbian lacks more than anything. It's functional, as people have mentioned it can do almost anything the iPhone does. The problem is it's often a pain to do it be it the slow navigation, menus here there and everywhere or cumbersome and too varied a methods to getting applications onto the device to begin with. I mean they have like three different PC suites in circulation and with the new Nokia Messaging they now have two different methods on the device to collect emails and the like too. Nothing is very streamlined at all.
Symbian certainly is a smartphone OS but it can be a real pain to use it. It's also a pretty unfun OS to use IMHO. Certainly I don't think you pull a Nokia out and have people want to have a play on the thing.
Still, good to see them put it on cheaper devices and we can only hope they get the entire ecosystem cleaned up soon for future releases.
@Cynical Hippie : Precisely. S60 is a smartphone OS. Always has been. Isn't going to change, unless Nokia for some reason withdraws the ability to develop apps for it. That America only adopted smartphones when they got touchscreens and QWERTY doesn't somehow change the definition the rest of the world uses. This'll run the same apps and do the same cloud synchronisation and podcast fetching and Flickr uploading that the E72 does. It's a low-end smartphone, but it's still a smartphone.
@MrMusic : Try getting a more modern device. My N79 has about 60MB of free RAM on boot and it only crashes when I start screwing around with less-than-approved software.
@sockatume
My even older N82 has 94 MB free RAM @ startup and I don't remember any low memory errors since I bought it 26 months ago.
@Cynical Hippie: I'm not arguing with you, I agree that the C5 should be a described as a smartphone as S60 is, without doubt, a smartphone OS.
I'm just pointing out that multi-tasking is not the acid test.
@Step666
How many modern smartphone OSes out there that can not multi-task, so "multi-tasking is not the acid test" for smartphone OSes? Oh come on, excluding multi-tasking from smartphone definition is only an excuse for the fruit phone!
@MrMusic ... 3210 isn't symbian. The first symbian phone from nokia was the 7650. The second was the 3650. They were released in 2002 and 2003, respectively.
Nokias lower end feature phones don't have symbian. Never did. What we do see, though, is that they're pushing lower end smartphones like this firmly into cheap-ish phone category. Because €135 for a phone puts it squarely into mid-low end phone category.
@GeceBekcisi: or to look at it another way, the inclusion of multi-tasking in the definition is just an attempt to exclude the iPhone
I'm not trying to make excuses for the iPhone but, lets be honest, it's far more a smartphone than a lot of other handsets that do support multi-tasking.
The afore-mentioned SE 'dumb-phones' running on the A200 platform, as well as the likes of the Samsung Jet and other devices running the same OS (I believe it's called NucleOS) or any of LG's 'S-Class' feature-phones. They all multi-task but none of them are smartphones.
@MrMusic
I get the impression you don't know anything about Symbian or at least the technical side of it. You don't know what OS your phone had 10 years ago or how good a success for example N97 was (not talking about SW of HW success, only sales).
I also want to express my annoyance to the writer of this story. It seems you don't trust your writing skill enough to just let the facts speak for themselves? I found your story to be biased and full of "humor" which really wasn't required. Care to explain for example why this Nokia is only "smart" phone and not a smart phone. No touchscreen? I don't want a freaking touchscreen on my smart phone.
Is there a way to exclude writers too here in engadget?
@Step666
"the inclusion of multi-tasking in the definition is just an attempt to exclude the iPhone"
If the smartphone term was invented and discussed after iPhone, yes, I'd agree with you. But the term was defined (with first widely sold devices labeled as smartphones) ~5 years before iPhone was launched. I hope you get my point here.
"They all multi-task but none of them are smartphones."
I know, that's why I said "install native applications and multitask them" above and stressed on "native". I strongly think that draws a clear line between featurephones and smartphones.
BTW with this definition, jailbroken and multitasking enabled iPhone is a smartphone, while factory default iPhone is not.
@Step666
right, because if the definition of a car requires one to have wheels, that must mean a bicycle is also a car
@GeceBekcisi: so you're saying that definitions cannot adapt to meet as new technologies/products/etc are invented?
If that were true, then to follow on from mrqs' analogy, the Tesla Roadster would not be considered a car because the definition would specify it as a vehicle which, amongst other things, had an internal combustion engine. Clearly though, that isn't the case any more and any such definition would be obsolete.
The world changes, lines get blurred and definitions need to be refined so that they are still relevant.
The iPhone's app support sets it apart from any feature-phone, so why shouldn't it be deemed a smartphone?
I don't personally remember there being much debate on what a smartphone was 5 years ago, so I'm not sure that the definition you seem to subscribe to was ever agreed upon in any way.
At the time there was such a gulf between top-end devices and everything else that there were any number of characteristics that could be deemed to be the mark of a smartphone - e-mail support, superior web-browsing, features such as wi-fi and yet none of these define a smartphone any more, so why should multi-tasking?
You might also be interested to read that multi-tasking is not mentioned once on the smartphone page Wikipedia, so perhaps that caveat isn't as widely agreed-upon as you believe (and yes, I know Wikipedia is not a perfect source and no I didn't just edit the page, I honestly wouldn't know how - I actually believe it's quite surprising that multi-tasking isn't mentioned in the slightest).
@Step666
what the tesla roadster did was replacing the ic engine with an electrical engine
what did the iphone replace multitasking with?
ui performance
performance that's already there in feature phones that do multitasking
in this analogy, the bicycle is able to carry more of your luggage than the car, and while not the only point, that surely is one of the main advantages of a car over a bicycle
can you name a device that everyone would agree is a smartphone that does any one thing (well, apart from battery life) worse than a device everyone would agree is a dumb/feature phone?
@mrqs: what exactly is the point you're trying to make here?
@Step666
"so you're saying that definitions cannot adapt to meet as new technologies/products/etc are invented?"
Nope, If we had lots of single-tasking SP OSes, that'd be OK but I defend that this definition shouldn't bent only for one device/OS.
"The world changes, lines get blurred and definitions need to be refined so that they are still relevant."
Yes, surely. But as I stated above, one device/OS is not enough to fix what's not broken yet.
"The iPhone's app support sets it apart from any feature-phone, so why shouldn't it be deemed a smartphone?"
Why shouldn't we call iPhone as "smart mediaphone"? That fits better than any other term IMO.
"I don't personally remember there being much debate on what a smartphone was 5 years ago, so I'm not sure that the definition you seem to subscribe to was ever agreed upon in any way."
You're right, there was nothing to debate because all smartphones at that time were sharing this common set of features (which weren't available on non smartphones): Native apps + multitasking. That's my reason to choose them as the definition itself and these are still present in all smartphones, except a smartphone wanna be mediaphone.
"You might also be interested to read that multi-tasking is not mentioned once on the smartphone page Wikipedia, so perhaps that caveat isn't as widely agreed-upon as you believe"
Yes, I noticed Wikipedia doesn't mention that (I've had similar discussions before as you might guess) and I believe the reason for that is iPhone wasn't out then and so nobody was discussing if multitasking was a definitive part of smartphones or not since it was already present in every smartphone, and after iPhone launched simply no one didn't add that or definition benders deleted it, I dunno.
@Cynical Hippie
One of the very first smartphone ran symbian on, son what was apple doing?