Why 'smart phone' is a dumb label

Computerworld - ABI Research analysts ruffled gadget-enthusiast feathers recently by suggesting that Apple's upcoming iPhone, though "clever and capable," cannot be considered a "smart phone." The reason, they said, was that a smart phone must feature an "open, commercial operating system that supports third-party applications."

Really? Since when?

Most authoritative sources disagree about the definition of the term smart phone, although nearly all say that it's a phone with PDA and Internet functionality, and say nothing about the "openness" of the operating system.

Gartner defines a smart phone as "a large-screen, voice-centric handheld device designed to offer complete phone functions while simultaneously functioning as a personal digital assistant (PDA)."

Palm Inc.'s definition is: "a portable device that combines a wireless phone, e-mail and Web access and an organizer into a single, integrated piece of hardware."

I searched a wide range of sources, including all major U.S. technology publishing houses, gadget-book publishers, online dictionaries, encyclopedias, Wikipedia and others, and not one of them agrees with ABI's requirement that a smart phone by definition runs an open operating system that supports third-party software development.

Does that mean the iPhone really is a "smart phone"? Who cares?

The term smart phone itself is the problem. It's misleading, inexact, confusing, practically useless and totally obsolete. Here are three reasons why everyone should stop using the s word:

1. The industry avoids the term smart phone

The pundits, experts and enthusiasts, including us in the press, love to use the term smart phone. We love it so much that we're blind to the fact that vendors in the industry we cover aggressively avoid it. Here's how the major handset manufacturers categorize their products:

• Nokia uses "camera phones," "Bluetooth-capable phones" and "video-recording phones."
• Sony Ericsson uses "talk and text phones," "camera phones," "music phones," "design phones" and "web and e-mail phones."
• LG uses "EVDO phones," "Bluetooth phones" and "MP3 phones."
• Palm calls all of its phones "smart phones."
• Research In Motion Ltd. calls all phones "devices."
• Samsung and Motorola avoid the categorization of phones altogether.

How about the carriers?

• Sprint uses "multimedia phones," "video phones," "picture phones" and "PDA phones."
• Cingular uses "camera phones," "music phones," "gophone," "PDAs /smart phones" and "flip phones."
• T-Mobile uses "bar phones," "flip phones," "slider phones" and "sidekicks."
• Verizon uses "cell phones," "PDAs and smart phones," "BlackBerry devices" and "push-to-talk phones."

Only Cingular and Verizon use "smart phone." But notice this: Both companies add "PDAs" to the smart phone label, even though neither sells nonphone PDAs. Apparently, the initials "PDA" are required in order to clarify to the public what a "smart phone" is. "Smart phone" can't stand alone as a clear descriptor of what phones do.

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