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In the mobile devices' world, today's consumers are facing a huge variety of products and it might be confusing to choose a product. Few years ago, cell phones had only one main purpose: sending and receiving voice communications. Novadays, the mobile phones are equipped with much more software applications, and offer many features, which englarges the purpose area to Internet access, digital photography, GPS and other areas.

The terminology is now more complex than the one reffering to the first mobile phones, and now the words smartphone, PDA, PDA phone and mobile phone are visible everywhere, and make you think what should you choose when you want to make an acquisition. Each type of device suffers changes in a constant rhythm and the features who once belonged to one type appear the next day on the other one. I will explore shortly each category of mobile communication devices, and I will try to make a brief comparison between some popular products.



First of all, let's give a short definition of the mother concept, the one where all the other devices evolved from. Mobile phones are called cellular phones or cellphones also, and these devices connect to a wireless network through radio waves or transmission by satellite. Mobile phones provide voice communication, as a main purpose and SMS and MMS, Web browsing, instant messaging and e-mail as secondary purposes.

PDA is the short form of Personal Digital Assistant, and it represents a small device which combines computing, telephony and faxing, Internet and networking. A typical PDA is pen-basd, but there are available PDAs with both sylus and keyboard, as input peripherals.

A smartphone is the combination of a PDA and a cell phone, with more attention on the cell phone part. This devices integrate more features than a PDA or a mini computer. Smartphone's features are more oriented toward cell phone options, than towards the options offered by PDA's. None of the industries defined until now the smartphone, but usually, any device which does more things than the normal cell phone does is categorized as smartphone.

There is no standardization in the mobile communications industry, and this makes things more confusing for the customers. While technology changes from one day to another, the functions and that mobile phones provide change very fast. Few years ago, if a device had a touchscreen it was a PDA, and if it didn't have one, it was considered a smartphone. Sony offers a device with touch screen and keyboard too, and the manufacturer calls it smartphone, but the device is actually a PDA oriented towards the cell phone functionality and features, and it is called a PDA phone.

For example, the iPhone, any BlackBErry and Nokia N and E series are categorized as smartphones, according to the biggest research company in wireless phones and smartphones industry. CTIA, an association which represents a lot of wireless device producers and carriers for wireless, use a simple definition for smartphones: "wireless phones with advanced data features and often keyboards". In the same time, they said that a phone is smart if it has the ability to manage and transmit data in addition to the basic voice call feature.