Smart phone

The smart phone concept is adopted from the past trend Game Boy. 

A brief history of telephone in relation to portabilization and all-in-one trends

Quite alike the development of video game - from arcade machines to portable consoles, telephone was not portable then gradually became portable and its usage was intensified. The telephone used to be available in land-line only. When people wanted to make a call when they were out, either they had to find a telephone booth on the street, or go to a store, restaurant or any shop to borrow a phone.

The image timeline of phones (from left to right): a land line phone; the first portable phone;
pocket size portable phone; a smart phone with buttons; iPhone 

With the enhancement of technology, telephone finally became portable. In 1983, the world's first mobile was created (Saini K., 2013). However, the phone was extremely expansive. Besides, its reception was quite poor as it still depended on an antenna to receive signals, and the phone network was not as good as nowadays. Besides the phone was big and heavy, so portable phone did not become popular until the late 90's when the phone network became mature and the portable phones became smaller and lighter, and so portable phone became commercially viable (Strickland J., 2011). Later on portable phone's usage was intensified and further developed to be like the smart phone now people are using, which allow people to do all sort of things within their palm, only they have to install different apps.

Concept's significance to company and consumer

An illustration compares the difference of people's lives in the old and recent days with the telephone.   

People addicted to smart phones.

The concept greatly stretched the functions of telephone from single purpose to multi-purposes. In terms of the telephone's original main purpose - to be a tool for communication, smart phone integrated various forms of communications - audio, email, text message, video etc.  into one. In terms of extension of telephone's functions, the smart phone is actually not a telephone anymore. It is more like a portable computer that provides telephone call function, and provides whatever its owner needs.  The concept made the telephone become a necessity that people cannot live without,  no matter communication must be by using it or not (Spencer B., 2011).