Have Some Smartphones Become More Equal Than Others?

From George Orwell’s book The Animal Farm (1945) we get this often quoted phrase "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" which is a phrase that pretty much applies to the current status of most phones in the Smartphone industry today with some Smartphones being considered – and rightly so – ‘more equal than others’. Like in the book where all the animals might have started off as equals, some of the animals (the pigs) – endowed with the intellect, ingenuity, charisma and noisemaking abilities (Squealer) – managed to pull ahead of the others and ‘designate’ themselves as the leaders of the rest and thus becoming ‘more equal.’ 

In the beginning, there was just either the cellphone - limited to sending and receiving voice communications and SMSs (Short Messaging Service) - or the Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) the portable electronic organizers or day planners that were so popular with executives who carried them along with the cellphone.    

There followed an integration of the two and the birth of what we now know as the Smartphone, apparently there was some debate as to whether to call them PDA Phones but we know who won that battle. With the Smartphone, one could make and receive calls, store and manage personal  information such as contacts, appointments, to-do lists, connect to internet,  email, locate via GPS, take pictures, store and play media files all in one portable unit.  

The general consensus on what is considered a smartphone includes features like an Operating System  i.e. Android,  iOS or Blackberry OS; Internet access, a QWERTY keyboard or a touch screen, messaging ability that goes beyond the simple SMS to include, email, Instant messages and MMS and so forth. But there are additional features and capabilities in hardware and software that phone makers have put into their devices that have helped propel the ‘more equal’ devices and their mother companies to the helm of the industry, distinguishing them as market leaders. 

Features like Wi-fi connectivity, Near Field Connection (NFC), finger print sensors, accelerometers, proximity and gesture sensors, speech recognition tools, and even Retina scanners.  iOS, Android, and Windows phone are all battling it out in this categories but so far Android (whose latest device is Samsung S5) and iOS (whose latest device is iPhone 5s) seem to be leading in most of those categories by a great margin.   
 

Other features such as the phone’s utilities, security features and applications available for a particular OS also help the advancement of any device in the industry.  Thus the ease with which you can access and get basic tasks done; the ability to find the device in case it is lost or stolen and protection of sensitive data; and the number of applications available for a particular OS, here  the latest numbers seem to favor Android and iOS with both having over a million apps in there stores.  

It is hard to predict what the future holds for the Smartphone as new technology and new players come on board but one thing that is guaranteed for users to be impressed. 

Physical Keyboard or Touch Screen?

Why this current fascination with touchscreen phones?  I personally don’t get it. My phone has both touch and physical keypad and I confess I much prefer to use the touchscreen when I play my favorite game of Word Mole because the touchscreen makes it so easy for me to double and even triple my game score. Also the abundance of real estate makes watching movies, viewing photos, reading documents and Google maps so much more enjoyable but other than that, I much prefer my physical QWERTY keypad.

 

With the physical keypad, all my senses are engaged…. I can touch the keypad, I can feel the keypad, I can see the keypad, and I can even hear the keypad (feedback adjustable to the sound of one’s liking). With a touchscreen, when you press a button on the screen, it all feels the same; nothing. With the physical keyboard, once fully acquainted with the lay of the board, you can even close your eyes and type, the touchscreen limits you because your eyes have to remain glued to the screen, making it impossible to send messages on the down low while in meetings or class.

Accuracy when messaging is also greatly challenged when using a touchscreen because on it you spend a greater part of the time correcting misspells and auto corrections gone nuts. Alternating between numbers and letters and searching for symbols that are designated to one function key or another can prove exasperating. 

It is not like I haven’t tried to conquer this dislike (Read: Fear) of touchscreens.  In so trying I decided to do some research into the technology and discovered that there are actually two types of touch screens.

One type is Capacitive which is sensitive to gentle touches and allows multi-touch and pinch gestures for zooming.  Capacitives are great in that the screens being glass instead of plastic, give brighter and sharper images. They are highly sensitive and don’t need a stylus and also support multi-touch. There downside however is that they are expensive because of their complex structure and are more prone to breaking. Some of the phones with Capacitive Touchscreens include HTC Incredible S, Samsung Galaxy (Note, SII, and Ace Plus), Nokia Lumia 800 and Apple iPhone 4S. 

The other type of touchscreen is Resistive, which is sensitive to pressure.  It is made up of several layers, the topmost of which flexes under the finger or stylus pushing back onto a layer behind it. Resistive touchscreens are normally used on lower spec phones and tablets and allow only single-touch functions.  The phones are cheap because of low production costs; the screens have a high resistance to dust and water and are best suited for handwriting recognition.  Unfortunately, the resistive screens are not too sensitive and one needs to press down harder, they have poor contrast and do not support multi touch. Some of the phones currently using the Resistive Touchscreen include Nokia C2-02, Samsung Star Duos and LG P520.

So if I was to get a phone with a Capacitive Touchscreen I might be able get NEARLY the same messaging speeds I get with my physical keypad but I will still be down a couple senses – sound and touch.  So am not sold yet. But I understand that touchscreen makers are well aware of these sentiments and are hard at work to come up with a touchscreen that incorporates these other factors such as vibration on a touch just like RIM did Blackberry Storm when they introduced a click sound to accompany any screen touches.  Until then, I am still holding tight to my physical keyboard phone.