The Motorola Droid, Latest Entry in the ‘App Phone’ Races →
David Pogue, from NYTimes.com creates a whole new mobile phone category:
“Smartphone” is too limited. A smartphone is a cellphone with e-mail — an old BlackBerry, a Blackjack, maybe a Treo. This new category — somewhere between cellphones and laptops, or even beyond them — deserves a name of its own. I invited suggestions on Twitter. The best came from @mentalworkout: “app phone.” Bingo. Apps distinguish iPhonish phones from mere smartphones, so “app phones” it is.
I agree that a new post-smartphone category is needed. But “app phone” makes the distinction on the wrong characteristic. If you ever had a Palm phone, or a WinMo phone, you know there where hundreds of apps. Even the Motorola RAZR allowed you to install games and applications.
What all these new phones share in common is the lack of stylus as the main UI input device. This is the result of a move from touch based capacitive screens from the old fingernail based resistive ones.
Still, capacitivephones doesn’t really sound too impressive. In any case, my vote goes to touchphones.
