iphone

The iPhone is a line of smartphones designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It runs Apple's iOS mobile operating system, known as the "iPhone OS" until mid-2010, shortly after the release of the iPad. The first iPhone was released on June 29, 2007; the most recent iPhone, the sixth-generation iPhone 5, on September 21, 2012. The user interface is built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard. The iPhone has Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity (2G, 3G and 4G).

An iPhone can shoot video (though this was not a standard feature until the iPhone 3GS),take photos, play music, send and receive email, browse the web, send texts, and receive visual voicemail. Other functions—games, reference, GPS navigation, social networking, etc.—can be enabled by downloading apps; as of 2012, the App Store offered more than 775,000 apps by Apple and third parties.

There are six generations of iPhone models, each accompanied by one of the six major releases of iOS. The original iPhone was a GSM phone, and established design precedents, such as a button placement that has persisted through all models and a screen size maintained until the launch of the iPhone 5 in 2012. The iPhone 3G added 3G cellular network capabilities and A-GPS location. The iPhone 3GS added a faster processor and a higher-resolution camera that could record video at 480p. The iPhone 4 featured a higher-resolution 960 × 640 "retina display", a higher-resolution rear-facing camera and a lower-resolution front-facing camera for video calling and other apps. The iPhone 4S added an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording, a dual-core processor, and a natural language voice control system called Siri. iPhone 5 features the new A6 processor, holds a 4-inch Retina display that is larger than its predecessor's 3.5-inch display, and replaces the 30-pin connector with an all-digital Lightning connector.

The resounding sales of the iPhone have been credited with reshaping the smartphone industry and helping make Apple one of the world's most valuable publicly trading companies in 2011–12. However, there has been criticism of the company's outsourcing and move of jobs from the United States to China. Apple and its manufacturing contractor Foxconn have received criticism due to poor working conditions at the assembly plant in China.

Android

Android is a Linux-based operating system designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Initially developed by Android, Inc., which Google backed financially and later bought in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007 along with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance: a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. The first Android-powered phone was sold in October 2008.

Android is open source and Google releases the code under the Apache License. This open source code and permissive licensing allows the software to be freely modified and distributed by device manufacturers, wireless carriers and enthusiast developers. Additionally, Android has a large community of developers writing applications ("apps") that extend the functionality of devices, written primarily in a customized version of the Java programming language. In October 2012, there were approximately 700,000 apps available for Android, and the estimated number of applications downloaded from Google Play, Android's primary app store, was 25 billion.

These factors have allowed Android to become the world's most widely used smartphone platform, overtaking Symbian in the fourth quarter of 2010, and the software of choice for technology companies who require a low-cost, customizable, lightweight operating system for high tech devices without developing one from scratch. As a result, despite being primarily designed for phones and tablets, it has seen additional applications on televisions, games consoles and other electronics. Android's open nature has further encouraged a large community of developers and enthusiasts to use the open source code as a foundation for community-driven projects, which add new features for advanced users or bring Android to devices which were officially released running other operating systems.

Android had a worldwide smartphone market share of 75% during the third quarter of 2012, with 500 million devices activated in total and 1.3 million activations per day. The operating system's success has made it a target for patent litigation as part of the so-called "smartphone wars" between technology companies.

Blackberry

The BlackBerry is a line of wireless handheld devices and services designed and marketed by Research In Motion Limited (RIM) operating as BlackBerry. The first BlackBerry device, an email pager, was released in 1999; the most recent BlackBerry devices, the Z10 and Q10, were announced on January 30, 2013. The user interface varies by model; most feature a physical QWERTY keyboard, while newer generations have relied on a multi-touch screen and virtual keyboard.

A BlackBerry can shoot video, take photos, play music, and perform online functions such as web-browsing and emailing. They can also send and receive push email and instant messages while maintaining a high level of security through on-device message encryption, and are designed to function as personal digital assistants. BlackBerry devices support a large variety of instant messaging features, with the most popular being the proprietary BlackBerry Messenger service. The BlackBerry PlayBook is a tablet computeroffered by the company. The 100 millionth BlackBerry smartphone was shipped in June quarter of 2013 and the 200 millionth smartphone was shipped in September quarter of 2012.

BlackBerry accounts for 3% of mobile device sales worldwide in 2011, making its manufacturer the sixth most popular device maker (25% of mobile device sales are smartphones). The consumer BlackBerry Internet Service is available in 91 countries worldwide on over 500 mobile service operators using various mobile technologies. As of September 2012, there were eighty million subscribers worldwide to BlackBerry.67 In 2011 the Caribbean and Latin America had the highest penetrations of BlackBerry smartphones worldwide, with up to about 45 per cent in the region having a RIM device.

BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone are considered the four major smartphone brands. BlackBerry is widely referred to as "CrackBerry" in the United States, which alludes to its excessive use by its owners and is a reference to the addictiveness of crack cocaine. Use of the term CrackBerry became so widespread that in November 2006 Webster's New World College Dictionary named "crackberry" the "New Word of the Year."