How has the versatility of smartphones revolutionized our daily lives and the electronics industry?

Smartphones have revolutionized the way we live by performing multiple functions such as navigation, payment, and health monitoring through a variety of applications and high-performance hardware. In the future, the combination of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things will open up even more possibilities.

 

Have you ever been stuck in a traffic jam and reached for your smartphone instead of turning on the radio to find out what’s going on? Last summer, Seoul’s “Seoul Fast Lane” program, developed by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, made it easier for citizens to travel on vacation by allowing them to view traffic on their smartphones. In addition, smartphone navigation has made it easier to navigate complicated country roads without the need for in-car navigation. The power of smartphones can also be seen in everyday life. Students listen to music on their smartphones instead of MP3s, record lessons on their smartphones instead of recorders, and write down their schedules on their smartphones instead of notebooks. It doesn’t stop there. On the 10th of this month, DMC Media announced that the use of smartphones in daily life has surpassed that of PCs, as people are able to do the same activities they used to do on computers.
Since the development of IBM’s Simon and Apple’s iPhone in 2007, smartphones have been called a PC in the palm of your hand. Smartphones have taken over the functions of many devices, from navigation to PCs. In this article, we’ll take a look at the characteristics of smartphones and how they’ve become the darlings of the electronics industry.
The reason why smartphones can do so many things is because there are countless programs that have been developed to perform specific functions on them. These programs are called applications or applications, and there are many different types of applications, such as games, navigation, traffic, social networks, etc. There are also many different applications that perform the same function. For example, when it comes to navigation applications, there are not only the above-mentioned ‘Seoul Quick Directions’ but also ‘Tmap’, ‘Naver Maps’, ‘Don’t be late’, and many other applications. This variety of applications is possible because of the flexible operating system (OS) of smartphones. An operating system is software that helps hardware run, and it manages the overall operation of the device so that the memory, disk, and peripherals interact efficiently.
When you think of an operating system, you might think of windows on a computer. Not only computers, but smartphones and other electronic devices have their own operating systems. For example, when you press the defrost button on your microwave, the operating system mechanically relays the commands you give to the button to make the microwave work properly. The variety of applications on smartphones is due to the “openness” of the operating system. Before smartphones, so-called feature phones had the operating system stored on the hardware in the form of a ROM (ROM) at the time of manufacture. ROM stands for Read Only Memory, which means that the memory stored in the phone is readable and cannot be changed. As a result, feature phone users can only run programs that the manufacturer has put into the operating system, and only developers connected to the manufacturer can develop applications. Smartphones, on the other hand, use a general-purpose operating system. A general-purpose operating system is one in which the development of applications for the operating system is open to the general public. For example, users of Apple’s iOS operating system can develop their own applications with a development tool called Xcode and share them on the open market with other iOS users. With a general-purpose operating system, a greater variety of applications can be developed and used due to the large number and diversity of developers. The wide variety of applications that can run on smartphones is largely due to the universal operating system.
However, even with a large number of applications, many of them would be useless if they took a long time to run. Smartphones have enough building blocks to make many applications run faster.
First, smartphones have the hardware to store and run programs. The latest Galaxy S3 has 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory, and more. That’s enough RAM to run a lot of applications and store large amounts of data, such as high-quality videos. Next, smartphones have fast data communication speeds so that programs run quickly. Data communications are referred to as 2G, 3G, or 4G depending on the stage of development, where G is short for Generation, and 4G is the most advanced. Smartphones use 3.5G and 4G. 3G data communication uses a frequency of 2 GHz and has a transmission speed of 2 Mbps, allowing you to send and receive video. The next step up is WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access, one of the U.S. cellular wireless access standards. It’s faster than the previous standard), which has enhanced features like video viewing and video calling. Finally, Wibro (Wireless Broadband Internet), which is 4G, has made it possible to access the Internet at high speeds while moving around. In other words, as you move to 4G, the speed at which your phone can perform programs gets faster and faster. Smartphones can run programs at high speeds, compared to 2G and 3G on feature phones. Finally, the capacitive touch method of smartphones has also contributed to the speed of smartphone functions. While traditional touch feature phones use pressure-sensitive touch to detect hand pressure, capacitive touch detects tiny electrical currents in the body, allowing for more subtle hand movements and faster commands. As you can see, smartphones have the technology to perform a variety of applications.
The development of these applications, as well as the hardware, data communications, and touch methods that enable them to run, has made smartphones a mainstay in the world of electronics. But the evolution of smartphones hasn’t just been about technology. Smartphones have also revolutionized the way we live. For example, many people now use their smartphones to make payments, check public transportation schedules, and monitor their health instead of using their wallets. These changes have made smartphones more than just an electronic gadget, but a central tool in our daily lives.
The technology around smartphones is still evolving. We expect smartphones to evolve beyond just voice calls and social media to become a central device of the information and communication revolution and a central tool of human culture. In the future, smartphones will bring more innovations and changes to make our lives more convenient and enriching. For example, they will be able to provide personalized services by combining with artificial intelligence (AI) and control all electronic devices in the home by connecting with Internet of Things (IoT) technology. As such, smartphones will continue to be at the center of our lives, with endless possibilities.