The first smartphone was called Simon; it was designed by IBM in 1992 and shown as a concept product that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality (PC-mobile handset convergence). For others, a smartphone is simply a phone with advanced features like e-mail, Internet and e-book reader capabilities, and/or a built-in full keyboard or external USB keyboard and VGA connector. Smartphones come in different varieties, using the Palm, Windows Mobile (a version of Windows CE), and Symbian operating systems, and may run Java, which allows many games and other applications to run on the handset. It took another decade before smartphones became small and powerful enough to be widely used.

In terms of features, most smartphones support full featured email capabilities with the functionality of a complete personal organizer. The most common operating systems (OS) used in smartphones by Q4 2008 sales are:Symbian OS from Symbian Ltd. Whether you use it as an organizer, an e-mail device, a cell phone, or all of the above, getting a smartphone is a smart move. In addition to functioning as an ordinary telephone, a smartphone’s features may include: Wireless e-mail, Internet, Web browsing, and fax Intercom function.

In 2001 RIM released the first BlackBerry which was the first smartphone optimized for wireless email use and has achieved a total customer base of 8 million subscribers by June 2007, of which three quarters are in North America. In addition, smartphones have become application delivery platforms, turning the once single-minded cellphone into a tiny mobile computer.

Most devices considered smartphones today use an identifiable operating system, often with the ability to add applications. In terms of features, most smartphones support full featured email capabilities with the functionality of a complete personal organizer. One common feature to the majority of the smartphones is a contact list able to store as many contacts as the available memory permits, in contrast to regular phones that has a limit to the maximum number of contacts that can be stored. The most common operating systems (OS) used in smartphones by Q4 2008 sales are:Symbian OS from Symbian Ltd.