What are the advances in telecommunications technology and the rise of smartphones, and which operating systems and technologies are currently dominating the market?

Smartphones have revolutionized our lives thanks to advances in communications technology, with the iOS and Android operating systems currently dominating the market. This article covers the history of smartphones, their main technologies, the pros and cons of operating systems, and the most popular smartphone models.

 

The development of communication technology has changed our lives in many ways, and smartphones are arguably the most significant change to our lives in recent years. Smartphones are devices that make our lives easier through data communication and GPS. They also allow us to perform a variety of tasks through applications. In this article, we’ll focus on providing useful information for people who are considering buying a smartphone.
The prototype of the smartphone in its current form was created by the Finnish company Nokia. In 2004, Nokia was the company with the largest share of the cell phone market. However, Nokia realized that its smartphone would not be successful in the market and scrapped the plan. However, in 2007, Apple opened up the smartphone market when it released the iPhone, based on the system of the iPod touch. Since then, various operating systems such as Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone have been released, as well as various smartphones such as the Galaxy S and Optimas. Apple, in particular, has pioneered and led the smartphone market by providing excellent performance while emphasizing design, as Steve Jobs said, “Design is not just about looks, it’s about function.”
Smartphones are largely categorized by their operating system. There are many different operating systems, including Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone, but Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android currently hold the lion’s share of the smartphone market. The main difference between the two operating systems is their openness and closedness. Android is a smartphone operating system based on Linux, a computer operating system. Linux is an open-source OS, which means that users can customize it to their liking. Android is similarly customizable, and each manufacturer (Samsung, LG, etc.) has its own way of customizing the operating system. iOS, on the other hand, is a proprietary OS developed by Apple and is characterized by its closed nature. In particular, iOS is closed through a program called iTunes. While Android can freely transfer files such as photos and documents via USB, iOS can only be transferred by synchronizing through iTunes.
This openness and closure has its advantages and disadvantages. Apple’s iOS is only available on its own smartphones, which means that the number of devices is very limited, making it easier to optimize the applications that run on each device. This can be a disadvantage in terms of market share, as only a small number of devices are available. Android, on the other hand, is used by a wide variety of smartphone manufacturers, so there is a wide variety of devices. However, even with the same OS version, the performance of different devices varies, which means that you have to optimize your application for all types of devices. However, the advantage is that smartphones come in a wide range of sizes, capabilities, and prices, so you can significantly increase your market share.
In addition to the aforementioned points, there are other differences between the two operating systems. Android is an operating system for small PCs. In particular, it tries to bring the multitasking of a PC to a mobile environment. The problem with Android in the early days was speed, as multitasking requires a lot of hardware power, which early smartphones didn’t have. iOS, on the other hand, is an operating system that was designed from the ground up for mobile. When one application is running, other applications are paused. While iOS is a highly optimized operating system, the downside is that it requires a computer, such as an Apple MacBook, to develop applications. Also, as a late-comer, Android has fewer applications than iOS. This means fewer applications are available to users, but Android is quickly closing this gap thanks to the open nature of its OS.
Next, let’s take a look at the CPU, which plays an important role in smartphone performance. CPUs in computers are mainly made by Intel and AMD. Until the recent advent of smartphones, CPUs for electronics were almost exclusively made by Intel and AMD. However, these CPUs had the disadvantage of consuming a lot of power and generating a lot of heat because they were used in computers that were always powered or in laptops with large batteries. To help miniaturize laptops, Intel created a CPU called ATOM, but it didn’t do much because it was basically based on CPUs for regular computers. This changed when a company called ARM announced a new low-power CPU design basis. Companies that hadn’t been able to grow much due to the dominance of Intel and AMD in the PC CPU market began to build CPUs based on this design. The major companies currently making smartphone CPUs include Nvidia, Texas Instruments (TI), Samsung, Apple, and Qualcomm, which previously focused on developing graphics cards. Intel also used ATOM CPUs to build small devices, but it didn’t go far enough and now only produces CPUs for netbooks.
Apple’s iPhones are powered by CPUs developed by Apple itself, and Samsung uses its own CPUs in its flagship models. Samsung and Apple’s CPUs are considered to be superior in performance compared to other smartphone CPUs. Nvidia’s CPUs have been criticized for being hot and power-hungry since they were originally developed for graphics cards, and their early mobile CPUs were also criticized for this. Texas Instruments’ mobile CPUs are used in a wide variety of smartphones because they are highly efficient with less power. However, it is Qualcomm’s CPUs that have the largest share of the smartphone CPU market. Qualcomm is a company that develops and produces communication module chips, producing one chip that enables communication and smartphone control with a single CPU. As a result, many manufacturers use Qualcomm’s CPUs to reduce weight, thickness, and power consumption. In particular, Qualcomm’s CPUs are optimized for simultaneous 4G LTE and 3G use, which is why many 4G smartphones use Qualcomm’s CPUs. However, Qualcomm’s CPUs to date have been criticized for being somewhat inferior in performance to CPUs from other manufacturers.
Now let’s look at the displays that users will see and touch the most. In recent years, TVs have been shifting to brown tubes, PDPs, LCDs, and LEDs. However, smartphones are mainly LCD and AMOLED. LCDs display colors by changing the transmittance of liquid crystals as the voltage changes. The disadvantage of this method is that the device cannot emit light on its own, so light is transmitted through the backlight on the back of the device to produce color. Since this is how colors are produced, the power consumption is the same for each color. AMOLED, on the other hand, has a thin-film transistor embedded in each light-emitting element to control the light. This allows for more sophisticated screens, and when displaying blacks, the light-emitting elements can be turned off to reduce power consumption. However, this is less than OLEDs, the basis of AMOLEDs, not LCDs, and the manufacturing process is tricky, so production volumes are not sufficient. Samsung is the leader in AMOLED development and production, and it mostly uses AMOLEDs in its smartphones. Because of the complexity of the manufacturing process, Samsung uses a pantile method rather than RGB (red, green, blue) on a single device. Pantile is a method of alternating the red and blue colors on a device, leaving the green color, which the human body is most sensitive to, and alternating the remaining red and blue colors. This method reduces the density of the device, which can increase productivity. Samsung’s AMOLEDs also have a slight yellowish tinge when reproducing white colors. To counteract this, a blue pigment is added to the glass plate that protects the display, resulting in a white appearance to the human eye.
Now, let’s take two popular smartphones as examples. One is the iPhone 15 Pro with iOS, and the other is the Galaxy S23 Ultra from Samsung. These two models are the top of the line devices on the two operating systems that represent the current smartphone market in 2024. If we compare the performance of each smartphone, the Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 3.36 GHz octa-core CPU, 12 GB of RAM, and a 6.8-inch screen (3088×1440, Dynamic AMOLED 2X). The iPhone 15 Pro, on the other hand, has a 3.78GHz six-core CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 6.1-inch screen (2556×1179, Super Retina XDR OLED). When comparing the performance of the devices, the Galaxy S23 Ultra excels at multitasking and demanding games thanks to its high-performance specs. The iPhone 15 Pro, on the other hand, offers a stable and efficient user experience thanks to the optimized performance of iOS.
Nowadays, users rarely have to choose between operating systems, so it’s a matter of personal design preference and operating system. The current smartphone market has unlimited development potential and will become a large market to replace the traditional cell phone market. In the future, just as computers and the Internet have become deeply entrenched in our lives, smartphones will become important devices in our daily lives.