A feature phone is a mobile phone

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

 that, like smartphone

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

s, combines the functions of a personal digital assistant

Personal digital assistant

A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

 (PDA) and a mobile phone.

Today's models typically also serve as portable media player

Portable media player

A portable media player or digital audio player, is a consumer electronics device that is capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, video, documents, etc. the data is typically stored on a hard drive, microdrive, or flash memory. In contrast, analog portable audio...

s and camera phone

Camera phone

A camera phone is a mobile phone which is able to capture still photographs . Since early in the 21st century the majority of mobile phones in use are camera phones....

s with touchscreen

Touchscreen

A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus...

, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...

 and mobile broadband

Mobile Broadband

Mobile broadband is the marketing term for wireless Internet access through a portable modem, mobile phone or other mobile device.-Description:...

 access.

Feature phones is the term generally used to describe low-end devices, while smartphone is used to describe high-end devices, though there is no official definition to distinguish the two categories. In fact, the most important difference between a feature phone and a smartphone is the kind of operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

 installed in it, thus both feature phones and smartphones can be low-end and high-end in their respective "feature phone" and "smartphone" categories.

Originally, the term referred to mobile phones with more features than other contemporary "dumb" mobile phones, and smartphone and feature phone are not mutually exclusive categories. As mobile phone technology advanced, all newer low-end phones were categorized as feature phones, though this is still not correct as labeling a phone a feature phone or a smartphone does not depend on its price but on its operating system, as described above.

Features

Feature phones may allow installation of third-party applications

Application software

Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

, usually via Java ME

Java Platform, Micro Edition

Java Platform, Micro Edition, or Java ME, is a Java platform designed for embedded systems . Target devices range from industrial controls to mobile phones and set-top boxes...

 or BREW

Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless

Brew is an application development platform created by Qualcomm, originally for CDMA mobile phones, featuring third party applications such as mobile games. It is offered in some feature phones but not in smart phones...

. A feature phone may not provide a complete file system

File system

A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...

 with folder hierarchy and file manager

File manager

A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to work with file systems. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files are: create, open, edit, view, print, play, rename, move, copy, delete, search/find, and modify file attributes, properties...

 user interface.

Usage

In 2011, feature phones accounted for 60% of the mobile (cellular) telephone installed base in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

External links