Mobile phones have become a part of our everyday lives. They have evolved from exclusive brick-sized lumps to small ‘must have’ items we can hardly live without. As well as making calls and sending texts we can take photos, keep a calendar and to-do list, plus a few other basic functions. Then there are what are called ‘smart phones’, which take the extra functionality to a whole new level.

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While there is no absolute definition of what makes a smart phone, it is often assumed that these phones run their own operating system - just like your computer. This opens up possibilities like no mobile phone before.

Because a smart phone has so much functionality, it would be pretty difficult to use one with a simple numeric keypad, so most will come with a full QWERTY keyboard. This might be a tactile hardware keyboard with small keys or a touch screen, which displays a virtual keyboard. Seeing as things like email are part of smart phone capabilities, you’ll probably spend a fair bit of time typing on it, so when looking for a new smart phone make sure you punch out a good few sentences on it to see how well you get on with the keyboard. In my opinion a slide-out keyboard is the best kind as it allows for a large screen and gives you a tactile keyboard at the same time. Touch screen keyboards hog up a lot of the screen space to display the keyboard.

The next area to pay attention to is the screen as this is what you’ll be looking at when surfing the web or watching videos, playing games etc. Again, pixels are the king – the more pixels your screen has, the more image detail can be displayed. Look for at least 240x 320 pixel display, but more the merrier.  Is it bright enough and how much can you adjust the brightness. Some phones have a sensor, so they automatically adjust screen brightness according to ambient light and some have sensors that turn off the screen when the phone is pressed against your ear, which does wonders for your phone’s battery life.

Many smart phones can work in portrait or landscape modes and will have an accelerometer built-in to automatically rotate the display as you rotate the phone. You might want to watch a video in landscape mode and then read a document in portrait mode. It is difficult to tell how tough a screen is without actually putting a knife to it, but once you have your heart set on a model, do a quick Internet search on its screen’s resistance to scratches. Even then it’s probably to a good idea to spend a buck or two on a screen protector film.

Then there’s the good ol’ boring battery to consider. Yes, it’s hardly an exciting feature – until it runs out on you. There are a few smart phones out there, which despite their techno bells and whistles don’t make it till dinner time on an average day. To make matters worse, some phones have an embedded battery, which means you can’t even slip in a spare. In such cases, once it needs to be replaced you’ll be without your phone for a while. Simple, but important things to check for.

As I mentioned earlier, email and attachments are pretty much taken as standard with smart phones and web browsing is also part of the bundle. As the screen will be smaller than on your computer, some tricks are done to display web pages and a bit of zooming and scrolling will be needed. Each manufacturer has their own idea of how this is best done, so make sure you check them out to see which suits you best. Different smart phones also come with different web browsers and some are more user friendly than others and some offer better speed and compatibility with plug-ins, like Flash player, which is used to display video. And speaking of video, these phones can store movies galore and act as music players too. The only real limits are the media formats supported and how much memory your phone has to store it all, plus any possible memory card slots to expand it further.

Nokia are about to release their ‘Comes with music’ range of phones, which come with free music downloads (which you get to keep forever) for the duration of the contract. This service will commence in Australia on March 20th 2009 and will no doubt yet again change the way music is distributed. If you’re a music fan this is definitely worth looking into as you can then have the biggest music smorgasbord to dip into from a catalogue of over four million songs.
   
Because smart phones run an operating system, you can usually buy additional software programs for it and they can vary from office applications like Word and Excel to games, puzzles, language guides, currency converters – well, pretty much anything really! There are also many free applications, like Adobe’s Acrobat PDF document reader. Some phones also support desktop ‘widgets’, which are small icons displaying a particular type of info at a glance – like weather, news headlines, clock, shares, to-do list and so on. Social networking is taken care of with video uploads to YouTube and similar sites as well as keeping in touch with your Facebook friends. If you take a photo it can be on the web a few seconds later!

When cameras first started to appear in mobile phones, they were pretty much unusable, but a lot has changed. Some high end Nokias, for example, with 5 mega pixel cameras and Carl Zeiss lenses (plus half-decent flash) take pretty good pictures and as you’ll have your phone with you most of the time you end up with pictures you otherwise wouldn’t have taken. The ability to shoot video can also come in handy, but I wouldn’t want to shoot an entire holiday video on a mobile phone. Perhaps in a few years’ time...!

GPS navigators have also been cropping up in mobile phones of late and while they might not be quite as good as dedicated units, they are still a very handy addition. Not only can you call that restaurant to book a table, but the phone will also guide you there. Particularly handy if you travel a fair bit and visit new places you’re not that familiar with.

The final, but very important decision you’ll have to consider is the network you sign up to as it’s no longer just the cost of calls and texts that you’ll have to be mindful of. Because you’ll be using the phone for email and web browsing and streaming audio/video, it is important to check what sort of data allowance your carrier offers – and what penalties apply if you exceed that limit. Don’t spoil your smart phone experience by signing up to a not-so-smart contract!

When asking Risto product specific questions please provide the brands and models of your equipment as this will allow him to respond with a more detailed reply.