By Jessica McCurdy Crooks
There are so many people who own a smartphone but they are only using it as a basic cellphone. For one thing, many people are afraid to play around with their smartphones for fear for causing any problems. Others simply do not need a smartphone but buy one anyway (you know who you are!). Another set of smartphone owners simply do not know how and where to get the information to maximize the features of their smartphones.
In this article, I'll do my best to help you understand how to get started getting the most out of that amazingly powerful little computer you carry in your pocket or purse.
Smartphone capabilities
There is a blurred line between smartphones, cellphones and even PDAs -- well, except that smartphones have effectively killed the PDA as a market category.
All these devices can now do much more than just make and receive calls and transmit text messages. Today's smartphones are literally miniature computers. They have cameras, video cameras, voice recorders, note taking applications and music as basic features. Many even have GPS capabilities.
While many business people still use the BlackBerry as the standard, more are moving towards the Apple iPhone or a powerful Android device as well. The iPhone is seen as a combination iPod and smartphone, along with that certain Apple something, giving it a definite edge over competing products.
Using smartphone applications
One of the major capabilities of smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone is the availability of applications to help do things better. They enable working on the go like never before. Workers or business people on the move can still give presentations, and listen in or participate in conferences.
When it comes to applications for the various smartphones, choices are mind-blowing. The list of applications available to iPhone users currently stands at 250,000 and growing. None of the others have reached that point, but Google's Android is slowly gaining ground. Currently, there are approximately 50,000 applications for the just the Droid model of Android phone alone.
By the way, that's often a point of confusion. Android and Droid are not the same thing. Android is Google's open-source mobile operating system. Droid is a branded phone handset made by Motorola for the Verizon network. It makes the other Android phone makers nuts when you point to their Android-based phones and call them Droids.
New apps for smartphones are frequently introduced to the market. There is a smartphone app for almost anything these days. Beauty junkies have plastic surgery apps that show what they'll look like in before and after shots. There are apps ranging from language training to pickup lines -- you name it, chances are, there is a smartphone app for it. One application, iHeadache helps diagnose headaches and generates reports that can be shared with a physician for proper diagnosis and treatment.
