| The Multimedia Smartphone Craze After becoming the most essential accessory for the trendy, the mobile phone has now reinvented itself and emerged as a new craze, the multimedia smartphone. What exactly is a smartphone? And why is it so desirable? A smartphone is basically a mobile telephone that has been equipped with a wide range of features to organise your personal and business needs while on the go. It also helps you keep in touch with the latest happenings via the Internet. That is just for starters as the latest multimedia smartphones offer even more. In today's modern world, it goes without saying that the multimedia smartphone will have Internet connection together with e-mail capability, enabling you to stay in touch with friends and family, the office and also keep tabs on the latest world affairs. Most smartphones enable access to social network sites such as Facebook while away from your computer. |  |
 | Already widely used in Europe and Asia, text messaging gets easier on the latest multimedia smartphones. Long gone are the difficulties associated with trying to compose a text message on a standard telephone keypad, now your smartphone has a QWERTY keyboard, allowing text to be easily entered. These keyboards can be either actual keyboards or virtual on screen touch keyboards, depending on your choice of smartphone. As the name suggests, the multimedia smartphone offers many functions over and above the basic telephone functionality, not least of which are video and audio capabilities. The latest multimedia smartphones can play back video and audio files or stream them from the Internet in a wide variety of formats. That's not all, the majority of phones in this category also boast high quality cameras both video and still so you can shoot your own movies or take stunning still photos. Another useful feature available on multimedia smartphones is GPS, Global Positioning System capability. This allows you to navigate your way around an unfamiliar place, should you lose your way or wish to track down a new restaurant. Two of the best known names in the smartphone brigade are the Blackberry favoured by US President Barack Obama and the Apple iPhone, but there are several manufacturers in the marketplace with similar offerings. Nokia, recently in the news with it's tie-up with Microsoft, has the N9 scheduled for release later this year, while Samsung is set to emulate the success of the Galaxy model with the new Wave 2 model released in November 2010. Other multimedia smartphones to keep an eye on are the HTC7 Pro and the Altek Leo. As the saying goes, watch this space! |