Feature Phones vs Smartphones – A Lopsided Battle

Over the last decade I’ve owned a number of mobile phones (as I am sure most people will have as well). To give you a quick idea, these are the phones that I have used:

• Nokia 7110,
• O2 XDA (rebadged HTC Wallaby),
• O2 XDA II (rebadged HTC Himalaya),
• O2 XDA IIs (rebadged HTC Blueangel),
• O2 XDA Exec (rebadged HTC Universal),
• iPhone 3G,
• iPhone 3GS (current).

All of my phones have had varying degrees of Internet capability (yes, even the Nokia 7110 which had WAP but it was fairly rubbish compared to modern standards). Apart from the Nokia, all of the phones I have had in my possession have been smartphones, the bulk of which have been Windows Mobile devices.

Now, I’m probably not your typical mobile phone user as I demand quite a lot from my phones in terms of functionality, connectivity and data. I find using a number pad to type out an e-mail or an SMS cumbersome and feel more at home with some sort of keyboard (be it virtual or physical). I also value loads of storage (and I’m talking gigabytes of storage here, 8GB is the bare minimum I would even contemplate).

Given the above, it’s obvious I’m not one to go out and buy something like a Nokia 1110 (which I affectionately call the “Nokia Eleventy-One-Ten”). What I can’t get my head around is the “feature phones” that we see popping up every now and then.

What is my definition of a “feature phone”.

Basically, it’s a phone that has one or maybe two stand out features but lack the required sophistication to be classified as a smartphone (particularly e-mail, web access, calendars and the ability to install third party applications). Such stand out features may be things such as a higher resolution camera, some sort of device specific media player or maybe a unique interface.

I think ten years ago or even five years ago, feature phones were most popular and companies such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson had a habit of churning out new devices as if they were going out of fashion. For all we knew, the marketing people in Nokia could have been using a random feature generator to determine which features got left out or crippled in their budget phones. Apart from the features, these devices were pretty similar with minor improvement with later revisions and the only attempt to innovate was through messing around with feature combinations.

Sure, the older, non-tech types might be happy with a feature phone but I can see this group shrinking rapidly over the next decade. I reckon feature phones will become a niche market whilst smartphones will become the de facto choice. I think people appreciate manufacturers releasing software updates for their devices to add new features and functionality, something that feature phones would be hard pressed to follow.