A superphone was born!

Budi Putra — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:03:36 +0000

Okay. Since mobile phones have growing and growing now, so that it’s not easy to group them into a clear category, a tight segmentation. “The majority of mobile phones that have graced retail shelves in recent years fall into two distinct categories: featurephones and smartphones. Lately, however, a new category has begun to emerge, that of the superphone,” John Sangiovanni wrote in GigaOM.

So, how to categorize a phone – a superphone? Or an excellent phone – according to T3? Based on its specifications or user’s needs?

Seems Sangiovanni prefers seeing it from technical aspect. According to him, a superphone must have:

Hardware

Display with at least 320 pixels on the short axis

3G connectivity or greater (plus additional radios as appropriate… Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.)

Location-sensing technology (GPS, high-resolution signal-strength-based location, or equivalent)

Hardware-accelerated graphics subsystem

Platform

Integrated web browser that supports current desktop development standards

Published native developer SDK that allows programmatic access to the specialized hardware/software features listed above.

Distribution

Integrated process for certification and searchable catalog distribution of 3rd-party applications.

Yeah, it’s an amazing defenition. But contrary to his own defenition, he categorizes iPhone as a superphone: “…it is difficult to dispute that the product that created and continues to define the superphone category is the iPhone,” Sangiovanni revealed. However, everybody knows that (the first) iPhone lacked 3G, GPS, etc… Or he means iPhone 3G? Is it really a superphone?

Whatever the answer, I think it’s interesting to discuss it more in-depth. According to you, our readers, are there any superphone today? Which ones? Why?

SlashPhone » superphone

A superphone was born!