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A smartphone is a mobile device that combines cellular and mobile computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which facilitate wider software, internet (including web browsing^[1] over mobile broadband), and multimedia functionality (including music, video, cameras, and gaming), alongside core phone functions such as voice calls and text messaging. Smartphones typically contain a number of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) chips, include various sensors that can be leveraged by their software (such as a magnetometer, proximity sensors, barometer, gyroscope, or accelerometer), and support wireless communications protocols (such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or satellite navigation).

Early smartphones were marketed primarily towards the enterprise market, attempting to bridge the functionality of standalone personal digital assistant (PDA) devices with support for cellular telephony, but were limited by their bulky form, short battery life, slow analog cellular networks, and the immaturity of wireless data services. These issues were eventually resolved with the exponential scaling and miniaturization of MOS transistors down to sub-micron levels (Moore's law), the improved lithium-ion battery, faster digitalmobile data networks (Edholm's law), and more mature softwareplatforms that allowed mobile device ecosystems to develop independently of data providers.

In the s, NTT DoCoMo's i-mode platform, BlackBerry, Nokia's Symbian platform, and Windows Mobile began to gain market traction, with models often featuring QWERTY keyboards or resistive touchscreen input, and emphasizing access to push email and wireless internet. Following the rising popularity of the iPhone in the late s, the majority of smartphones have featured thin, slate-like form factors, with large, capacitive screens with support for multi-touch gestures rather than physical keyboards, and offer the ability for users to download or purchase additional applications from a centralized store, and use cloud storage and synchronization, virtual assistants, as well as mobile payment services. Smartphones have largely replaced PDAs and handheld/palm-sized PCs.

Improved hardware and faster wireless communication (due to standards such as LTE) have bolstered the growth of the smartphone industry. In the third quarter of , one billion smartphones were in use worldwide.^[2] Global smartphone sales surpassed the sales figures for feature phones in early ^[3]

History

The development of the smartphone was enabled by several key technological advances. The exponential scaling and miniaturization of MOSFETs (MOS transistors) down to sub-micron levels during the s–s (as predicted by Moore's law) made it possible to build portable smart devices such as smartphones,^[4][5][6] as well as enabling the transition from analog to faster digital wirelessmobile networks (leading to Edholm's law).^[7][8][9] Other important enabling factors include the lithium-ion battery, an indispensable energy source enabling long battery life,^[10] invented in the s^[11] and commercialized in ,^[12] and the development of more mature softwareplatforms that allowed mobile device ecosystems to develop independently of data providers.

Forerunner

In the early s, IBM engineer Frank Canova realised that chip-and-wireless technology was becoming small enough to use in handheld devices.^[14] The first commercially available device that could be properly referred to as a "smartphone" began as a prototype called "Angler" developed by Canova in while at IBM and demonstrated in November of that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show.^[15][16][17] A refined version was marketed to consumers in by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator. In addition to placing and receiving cellularcalls, the touchscreen-equipped Simon could send and receive faxes and emails. It included an address book, calendar, appointment scheduler, calculator, world time clock, and notepad, as well as other visionary mobile applications such as maps, stock reports and news.^[18]

The IBM Simon was manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric, which integrated features from its own wireless personal digital assistant (PDA) and cellular radio technologies.^[19] It featured a liquid-crystal display (LCD) and PC Card support.^[20] The Simon was commercially unsuccessful, particularly due to its bulky form factor and limited battery life,^[21] using NiCad batteries rather than the nickel–metal hydride batteries commonly used in mobile phones in the s, or lithium-ion batteries used in modern smartphones.^[22]

The term "smart phone" or "smartphone" was not coined until a year after the introduction of the Simon, appearing in print as early as , describing AT&T's PhoneWriter Communicator.^{[23][non-primary source needed]}

PDA/phone hybrids

Beginning in the mid-late s, many people who had mobile phones carried a separate dedicated PDA device, running early versions of operating systems such as Palm OS, Newton OS, Symbian or Windows CE/Pocket PC. These operating systems would later evolve into early mobile operating systems. Most of the "smartphones" in this era were hybrid devices that combined these existing familiar PDA OSes with basic phone hardware. The results were devices that were bulkier than either dedicated mobile phones or PDAs, but allowed a limited amount of cellular Internet access. PDA and mobile phone manufacturers competed in reducing the size of devices. The bulk of these smartphones combined with their high cost and expensive data plans, plus other drawbacks such as expansion limitations and decreased battery life compared to separate standalone devices, generally limited their popularity to "early adopters" and business users who needed portable connectivity.

In March , Hewlett-Packard released the OmniGo LX, a modified HP LX palmtop PC with a Nokia mobile phone piggybacked onto it and ROM-based software to support it. It had a × resolution CGA compatible four-shade gray-scale LCD screen and could be used to place and receive calls, and to create and receive text messages, emails and faxes. It was also % DOS compatible, allowing it to run thousands of existing software titles, including early versions of Windows.

The Nokia Communicator (right) and the updated model (left)

In August , Nokia released the Nokia Communicator, a digital cellular PDA based on the Nokia with an integrated system based on the PEN/GEOS operating system from Geoworks. The two components were attached by a hinge in what became known as a clamshell design, with the display above and a physical QWERTY keyboard below. The PDA provided e-mail; calendar, address book, calculator and notebook applications; text-based Web browsing; and could send and receive faxes. When closed, the device could be used as a digital cellular telephone.

In June Qualcomm released the "pdQ Smartphone", a CDMA digital PCS smartphone with an integrated Palm PDA and Internet connectivity.^[24]

Subsequent landmark devices included:

Japanese cell phones

In , Japanese wireless provider NTT DoCoMo launched i-mode, a new mobile internet platform which provided data transmission speeds up to kilobits per second, and access web services available through the platform such as online shopping. NTT DoCoMo's i-mode used cHTML, a language which restricted some aspects of traditional HTML in favor of increasing data speed for the devices. Limited functionality, small screens and limited bandwidth allowed for phones to use the slower data speeds available. The rise of i-mode helped NTT DoCoMo accumulate an estimated 40 million subscribers by the end of , and ranked first in market capitalization in Japan and second globally.^[34] Japanese cell phones increasingly diverged from global standards and trends to offer other forms of advanced services and smartphone-like functionality that were specifically tailored to the Japanese market, such as mobile payments and shopping, near-field communication (NFC) allowing mobile wallet functionality to replace smart cards for transit fares, loyalty cards, identity cards, event tickets, coupons, money transfer, etc., downloadable content like musical ringtones, games, and comics, and 1segmobile television.^[35][36] Phones built by Japanese manufacturers used custom firmware, however, and didn't yet feature standardized mobile operating systems designed to cater to third-party application development, so their software and ecosystems were akin to very advanced feature phones. As with other feature phones, additional software and services required partnerships and deals with providers.

The degree of integration between phones and carriers, unique phone features, non-standardized platforms, and tailoring to Japanese culture made it difficult for Japanese manufacturers to export their phones, especially when demand was so high in Japan that the companies didn't feel the need to look elsewhere for additional profits.^[37][38][39]

The rise of 3G technology in other markets and non-Japanese phones with powerful standardized smartphone operating systems, app stores, and advanced wireless network capabilities allowed non-Japanese phone manufacturers to finally break in to the Japanese market, gradually adopting Japanese phone features like emojis, mobile payments, NFC, etc. and spreading them to the rest of the world.

Early smartphones

Several BlackBerry smartphones, which were highly popular in the mid-late s

Phones that made effective use of any significant data connectivity were still rare outside Japan until the introduction of the Danger Hiptop in , which saw moderate success among U.S. consumers as the T-Mobile Sidekick. Later, in the mids, business users in the U.S. started to adopt devices based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and then BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion. American users popularized the term "CrackBerry" in due to the BlackBerry's addictive nature.^[40] In the U.S., the high cost of data plans and relative rarity of devices with Wi-Fi capabilities that could avoid cellular data network usage kept adoption of smartphones mainly to business professionals and "early adopters."

Outside the U.S. and Japan, Nokia was seeing success with its smartphones based on Symbian, originally developed by Psion for their personal organisers, and it was the most popular smartphone OS in Europe during the middle to late s. Initially, Nokia's Symbian smartphones were focused on business with the Eseries,^[41] similar to Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices at the time. From onwards, Nokia started producing consumer-focused smartphones, popularized by the entertainment-focused Nseries. Until , Symbian was the world's most widely used smartphone operating system.^[42]

The touchscreen PDA-derived nature of adapted operating systems like Palm OS, the "Pocket PC" versions of what was later Windows Mobile, and the UIQ interface that was originally designed for pen-based PDAs on Symbian OS devices resulted in some early smartphones having stylus-based interfaces. These allowed for virtual keyboards and/or handwriting input, thus also allowing easy entry of Asian characters.^[43]

By the mids, the majority of smartphones had a physical QWERTY keyboard. Most used a "keyboard bar" form factor, like the BlackBerry line, Windows Mobile smartphones, Palm Treos, and some of the Nokia Eseries. A few hid their full physical QWERTY keyboard in a sliding form factor, like the Danger Hiptop line. Some even had only a numeric keypad using T9 text input, like the Nokia Nseries and other models in the Nokia Eseries. Resistive touchscreens with stylus-based interfaces could still be found on a few smartphones, like the Palm Treos, which had dropped their handwriting input after a few early models that were available in versions with Graffiti instead of a keyboard.

Form factor and operating system shifts

The original Apple iPhone; following its introduction the common smartphone form factor shifted to large touchscreen software interfaces without physical keypads^[44]

The late s and early s saw a shift in smartphone interfaces away from devices with physical keyboards and keypads to ones with large finger-operated capacitive touchscreens.^[44] The first phone of any kind with a large capacitive touchscreen was the LG Prada, announced by LG in December ^[45] This was a fashionable feature phone created in collaboration with Italian luxury designer Prada with a 3" x pixel screen.^[46]

In January , Apple Computer introduced the iPhone.^[47][48][49] It had a " capacitive touchscreen with twice the common resolution of most smartphone screens at the time,^[50] and introduced multi-touch to phones, which allowed gestures such as "pinching" to zoom in or out on photos, maps, and web pages. The iPhone was notable as being the first device of its kind targeted at the mass market to abandon the use of a stylus, keyboard, or keypad typical of contemporary smartphones, instead using a large touchscreen for direct finger input as its main means of interaction.^[43]

The iPhone's operating system was also a shift away from previous ones that were adapted from PDAs and feature phones, to one powerful enough to avoid using a limited, stripped down web browser requiring pages specially formatted using technologies such as WML, cHTML, or XHTML that previous phones supported and instead run a version of Apple's Safari browser that could easily render full websites^[51][52][53] not specifically designed for phones.^[54]

Later Apple shipped a software update that gave the iPhone a built-in on-device App Store allowing direct wireless downloads of third-party software.^[55][56] This kind of centralized App Store and free developer tools^[57][58] quickly became the new main paradigm for all smartphone platforms for software development, distribution, discovery, installation, and payment, in place of expensive developer tools that required official approval to use and a dependence on third-party sources providing applications for multiple platforms.^[44]

The advantages of a design with software powerful enough to support advanced applications and a large capacitive touchscreen affected the development of another smartphone OS platform, Android, with a more BlackBerry-like prototype device scrapped in favor of a touchscreen device with a slide-out physical keyboard, as Google's engineers thought at the time that a touchscreen could not completely replace a physical keyboard and buttons.^[59][60][61] Android is based around a modified Linux kernel, again providing more power than mobile operating systems adapted from PDAs and feature phones. The first Android device, the horizontal-sliding HTC Dream, was released in September ^[62]

Smartphone OS competition

The iPhone and later touchscreen-only Android devices together popularized the slate form factor, based on a large capacitive touchscreen as the sole means of interaction, and led to the decline of earlier, keyboard- and keypad-focused platforms.^[44] Multiple vendors attempted to update or replace their existing smartphone platforms and devices to better-compete with Android and the iPhone; Palm unveiled a new platform known as webOS for its Palm Pre in late to replace Palm OS, which featured a focus on a task-based "card" metaphor and seamless synchronization and integration between various online services (as opposed to the then-conventional concept of a smartphone needing a PC to serve as a "canonical, authoritative repository" for user data).^[63][64]HP acquired Palm in and released several other webOS devices, including the Pre 3 and HP TouchPad tablet. As part of a proposed divestment of its consumer business to focus on enterprise software, HP abruptly ended development of future webOS devices in August , and sold the rights to webOS to LG Electronics in , for use as a smart TV platform.^[65][66]

Research in Motion introduced the vertical-sliding BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry OS 6 in , which featured a redesigned user interface, support for gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, and a new web browser based on the same WebKit rendering engine used by the iPhone.^[67][68] The following year, RIM released BlackBerry OS 7 and new models in the Bold and Torch ranges, which included a new Bold with a touchscreen alongside its keyboard, and the Torch —the first BlackBerry phone to not include a physical keyboard.^[69] In , it replaced the legacy BlackBerry OS with a revamped, QNX-based platform known as BlackBerry 10, with the all-touch BlackBerry Z10 and keyboard-equipped Q10 as launch devices.^[70]

In , Microsoft unveiled a replacement for Windows Mobile known as Windows Phone, featuring a new touchscreen-centric user interface built around flat design and typography, a home screen with "live tiles" containing feeds of updates from apps, as well as integrated Microsoft Office apps.^[71] In February , Nokia announced that it had entered into a major partnership with Microsoft, under which it would exclusively use Windows Phone on all of its future smartphones, and integrate Microsoft's Bing search engine and Bing Maps (which, as part of the partnership, would also license Nokia Maps data) into all future devices. The announcement led to the abandonment of both Symbian, as well as MeeGo—a Linux-based mobile platform it was co-developing with Intel.^[72][73][74] Nokia's low-end Lumia saw strong demand and helped Windows Phone gain niche popularity in some markets,^[75] overtaking BlackBerry in global market share in ^[76][77]

Many of these attempts to compete with Android and iPhone were short-lived. Over the course of the decade, the two platforms became a clear duopoly in smartphone sales and market share, with BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and "other" operating systems eventually stagnating to little or no measurable market share.^[78][79] In , BlackBerry began to pivot away from its in-house mobile platforms in favor of producing Android devices, focusing on a security-enhanced distribution of the software. The following year, the company announced that it would also exit the hardware market to focus more on software and its enterprise middleware,^[80] and began to license the BlackBerry brand and its Android distribution to third-party OEMs such as TCL for future devices.^[81][82]

In September , Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Nokia's mobile device business for $ billion, as part of a strategy under CEO Steve Ballmer for Microsoft to be a "devices and services" company.^[83] Despite the growth of Windows Phone and the Lumia range (which accounted for nearly 90% of all Windows Phone devices sold),^[84] the platform never had significant market share in the key U.S. market,^[75] and Microsoft was unable to maintain Windows Phone's momentum in the years that followed, resulting in dwindling interest from users and app developers.^[85] After Balmer was succeeded by Satya Nadella (who has placed a larger focus on software and cloud computing) as CEO of Microsoft, it took a $ billion write-off on the Nokia assets in July , and laid off nearly the entire Microsoft Mobile unit in May ^[86][87][83]

Prior to the completion of the sale to Microsoft, Nokia released a series of Android-derived smartphones for emerging markets known as Nokia X, which combined an Android-based platform with elements of Windows Phone and Nokia's feature phone platform Asha, using Microsoft and Nokia services rather than Google.^[88]

Camera advancements

The first commercial camera phone was the KyoceraVisual Phone VP, released in Japan in May ^[90] It was called a "mobile videophone" at the time,^[91] and had a ,pixelfront-facing camera.^[90] It could send up to two images per second over Japan's Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) cellular network, and store up to 20 JPEGdigital images, which could be sent over e-mail.^[90] The first mass-market camera phone was the J-SH04, a SharpJ-Phone model sold in Japan in November ^[92][93] It could instantly transmit pictures via cell phone telecommunication.^[94]

By the mids, higher-end cell phones commonly had integrated digital cameras. In camera phones outsold stand-alone digital cameras, and in they outsold film and digital stand-alone cameras. Five billion camera phones were sold in five years, and by more than half of the installed base of all mobile phones were camera phones. Sales of separate cameras peaked in ^[95]

Many early smartphones didn't have cameras at all, and earlier models that had them had low performance and insufficient image and video quality that could not compete with budget pocket cameras and fullfill user's needs.^[96] By the beginning of the s almost all smartphones had an integrated digital camera. The decline in sales of stand-alone cameras accelerated due to the increasing use of smartphones with rapidly improving camera technology for casual photography, easier image manipulation, and abilities to directly share photos through the use of apps and web-based services.^{[97][98][99][]} By , cell phones with integrated cameras were selling hundreds of millions per year. In , digital camera sales were million units or only less than a third of digital camera sales numbers at their peak and also slightly less than film camera sold number at their peak.^[][]

Contributing to the rise in popularity of smartphones being used over dedicated cameras for photography, smaller pocket cameras have difficulty producing bokeh in images, but nowadays, some smartphones have dual-lens cameras that reproduce the bokeh effect easily, and can even rearrange the level of bokeh after shooting. This works by capturing multiple images with different focus settings, then combining the background of the main image with a macro focus shot.

In the Nokia N95 was notable as a smartphone that had a Megapixel (MP) camera, when most others had cameras with around 3 MP or less than 2 MP. Some specialized feature phones like the LG Viewty, Samsung SGH-G, and Sony Ericsson Ki, all released later that year, also had MP cameras. By MP cameras were common; a few smartphones had MP cameras and the Nokia N8, Sony Ericsson Satio,^[] and Samsung M Pixon12^[] feature phone had 12 MP. In the Samsung Omnia HD was the first phone with p video recording. A megapixel smartphone with 3x optical zoom was announced in late ^[] In Nokia announced the Nokia PureView, featuring a megapixel 1/inch sensor and a high-resolution f/ Zeiss all-aspherical one-group lens. p video recording on a smartphone was achieved in , and p (4K) video recording in In Apple introduced the iPhone 7 Plus, one of the phones to popularize a dual camera setup. The iPhone 7 Plus included a main 12 MP camera along with a 12 MP telephoto camera.^[] In early Huawei released a new flagship phone, the Huawei P20 Pro, one of the first triple camera lens setups with Leica optics.^[] In late , Samsung released a new mid-range smartphone, the Galaxy A9 () with the world's first quad camera setup. The Nokia 9 PureView was released in featuring a penta-lens camera system.^[]

Display advancements

In the early s, larger smartphones with screen sizes of at least millimetres (&#;in) diagonal, dubbed "phablets", began to achieve popularity, with the Samsung Galaxy Note series gaining notably wide adoption.^[][] In , Huawei launched the Huawei Mate series, sporting a millimetres (&#;in) HD (x) IPS+ LCD display, which was considered to be quite large at the time.^[]

Some companies began to release smartphones in incorporating flexible displays to create curved form factors, such as the Samsung Galaxy Round and LG G Flex.^[][][]

By , p displays began to appear on high-end smartphones.^[] In , Sony released the Xperia Z5 Premium, featuring a 4K resolution display, although only images and videos could actually be rendered at that resolution (all other software was shown at p).^[]

New trends for smartphone displays began to emerge in , with both LG and Samsung releasing flagship smartphones (LG G6 and Galaxy S8), utilizing displays with taller aspect ratios than the common ratio, and a high screen-to-body ratio, also known as a "bezel-less design". These designs allow the display to have a larger diagonal measurement, but with a slimmer width than displays with an equivalent screen size.^[][][]

Another trend popularized in were displays containing tab-like cut-outs at the top-centre—colloquially known as a "notch"—to contain the front-facing camera, and sometimes other sensors typically located along the top bezel of a device.^[][] These designs allow for "edge-to-edge" displays that take up nearly the entire height of the device, with little to no bezel along the top, and sometimes a minimal bottom bezel as well. This design characteristic appeared almost simultaneously on the Sharp Aquos S2 and the Essential Phone,^[] which featured circular tabs for their cameras, followed just a month later by the iPhone X, which used a wider tab to contain a camera and facial scanning system known as Face ID.^[] The LG V10 had a precursor to the concept, with a portion of the screen wrapped around the camera area in the top-left corner, with the resulting area marketed as a "second" display that could be used for various supplemental features.^[]

Other variations of the practice later emerged, such as a "hole-punch" camera (such as those of the Honor View 20, and Samsung's Galaxy A8s and Galaxy S10)—eschewing the tabbed "notch" for a circular or rounded-rectangular cut-out within the screen instead,^[] while Oppo released the first "all-screen" phones with no notches at all^[], including one with a mechanical front camera that pops up from the top of the device (Find X),^[] and a prototype for a front-facing camera that can be embedded and hidden below the display, using a special partially-translucent screen structure that allows light to reach the image sensor below the panel.^[] The first implementation was the ZTE Axon 20 5G, with a 32 MP sensor manufactured by Visionox.^[]

Refresh rates greater than 60 Hz first appeared in on the Razer Phone and Sharp Aquos R Compact, and were popularized by several brands in Devices with a high refresh rate have lower motion blur and input lag.^[]

Foldable smartphones

Smartphones utilizing flexible displays were theorized as possible once manufacturing costs and production processes were feasible.^[] In November , the startup company Royole unveiled the first commercially available foldable smartphone, the Royole FlexPai. Also that month, Samsung presented a prototype phone featuring an "Infinity Flex Display" at its developers conference, with a smaller, outer display on its "cover", and a larger, tablet-sized display when opened. Samsung stated that it also had to develop a new polymer material to coat the display as opposed to glass.^[][][] Samsung officially announced the Galaxy Fold, based on the previously-demonstrated prototype, in February for an originally-scheduled release in late-April.^[] Due to various durability issues with the display and hinge systems encountered by early reviewers, the release of the Galaxy Fold was delayed to September to allow for design changes ^[] Motorola also introduced a variation of the concept with its re-imagining of the Razr, using a horizontally-folding display to create a clamshell form factor of the company's previous feature phone range of the same name.^[]

Other developments in the s

The first smartphone with a fingerprint reader was the Motorola Atrix 4G in ^[] In September , the iPhone 5S was unveiled as the first smartphone on a major U.S. carrier since the Atrix to feature this technology.^[] Once again, the iPhone popularized this concept.

In , Samsung introduced the Galaxy S3 (GT-i) with retrofittable wireless charging, pop-up video playback, 4G-LTE variant (GT-i) quad-core processor.

In , Fairphone launched its first "socially ethical" smartphone at the London Design Festival to address concerns regarding the sourcing of materials in the manufacturing^[] followed by Shiftphone in ^[] In late , QSAlpha commenced production of a smartphone designed entirely around security, encryption and identity protection.^[]

In October , Motorola Mobility announced Project Ara, a concept for a modular smartphone platform that would allow users to customize and upgrade their phones with add-on modules that attached magnetically to a frame.^[][] Ara was retained by Google following its sale of Motorola Mobility to Lenovo,^[] but was shelved in ^[] That year, LG and Motorola both unveiled smartphones featuring a limited form of modularity for accessories; the LG G5 allowed accessories to be installed via the removal of its battery compartment,^[] while the Moto Z utilizes accessories attached magnetically to the rear of the device.^[]

Microsoft, expanding upon the concept of Motorola's short-lived "Webtop", unveiled functionality for its Windows 10 operating system for phones that allows supported devices to be docked for use with a PC-styled desktop environment.^[][]

Samsung and LG used to be the “last standing” manufacturers to offer flagship devices with user-replaceable batteries. But in , Samsung succumbed to the minimalism trend set by Apple, introducing the Galaxy S6 without a user-replaceable battery. In addition, Samsung was criticised for pruning long-standing features such as MHL, MicroUSB , water resistance and MicroSD card support, of which the latter two came back in with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.

As of , the global median for smartphone ownership was 43%.^[]Statista forecast that billion people would own smartphones in ^[]

Major technologies that began to trend in included a focus on virtual reality and augmented reality experiences catered towards smartphones, the newly introduced USB-C connector, and improving LTE technologies.^[]

In , the first smartphones featuring fingerprint readers embedded within OLED displays were announced, followed in by an implementation using an ultrasonic sensor on the Samsung Galaxy S^[][]

In , the majority of smartphones released have more than one camera, are waterproof with IP67 and IP68 ratings, and unlock using facial recognition or fingerprint scanners.^[]

Hardware

A typical smartphone contains a number of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) chips,^[] which in turn contain billions of tiny MOS field-effect transistors (MOSFETs).^[5] A typical smartphone contains the following MOS IC chips.^[]

Central processing unit

Smartphones have central processing units (CPUs), similar to those in computers, but optimised to operate in low power environments. In smartphones, the CPU is typically integrated in a CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) system-on-a-chip (SoC) application processor.^[]

The performance of mobile CPU depends not only on the clock rate (generally given in multiples of hertz)^[] but also on the memory hierarchy. Because of these challenges, the performance of mobile phone CPUs is often more appropriately given by scores derived from various standardized tests to measure the real effective performance in commonly used applications.

Display

One of the main characteristics of smartphones is the screen. Depending on the device's design, the screen fills most or nearly all of the space on a device's front surface. Many smartphone displays have an aspect ratio of , but taller aspect ratios became more common in

Screen sizes are measured in diagonal inches. Phones with screens larger than inches are often called "phablets". Smartphones with screens over inches in size are commonly difficult to use with only a single hand, since most thumbs cannot reach the entire screen surface; they may need to be shifted around in the hand, held in one hand and manipulated by the other, or used in place with both hands. Due to design advances, some modern smartphones with large screen sizes and "edge-to-edge" designs have compact builds that improve their ergonomics, while the shift to taller aspect ratios have resulted in phones that have larger screen sizes whilst maintaining the ergonomics associated with smaller displays.^[][][]

Liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are the most common. Some displays are integrated with pressure-sensitive digitizers, such as those developed by Wacom and Samsung,^[] and Apple's Force Touch system.

Sound

Some audio quality enhancing features, such as Voice over LTE and HD Voice have appeared and are often available on newer smartphones. Sound quality can remain a problem due to the design of the phone, the quality of the cellular network and compression algorithms used in long-distance calls.^[][] Audio quality can be improved using a VoIP application over WiFi.^[] Cellphones have small speakers so that the user can use a speakerphone feature and talk to a person on the phone without holding it to their ear. The small speakers can also be used to listen to digital audio files of music or speech or watch videos with an audio component, without holding the phone close to the ear.

Battery