Mobile Phone Technologies

Mobile phone technologies keep advancing by the day. Even as we speak, phones are going obsolete and new ones are entering the market. For the new mobile phone owner, keeping up with the trends can be difficult. Not everyone knows the difference between GPS and GPRS. If all the jargon has you scratching your head, here's a quick guide to the most common mobile phone technologies.

Mobile Phone 2G and 3G

These terms refer to the "generations" or trends in mobile phone technologies. Analog made up the first generation, although the concept of generations came about only after 2G. The second generation consists of the digital phones that dominated the market in the early 2000s, which still used traditional phone networks. The 3G group uses internet technology to give you real-time, multimedia capabilities. With a 3G mobile phone, you can send and receive mail, browse the web, make video calls, and basically do everything you can on your PC.

Mobile Phone Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a wireless connection that connects mobile devices (including phones, laptops, PDAs, etc) within a short range. It lets you send and receive data from other Bluetooth devices within 30 feet, even through physical barriers.

Dual band, tri-band, and quad-band

A band is a range of frequencies on which mobile phones can operate. Each region has a designated band. A dual band phone operates on two bands and therefore can be used on two different regions or countries. Tri-band phones were the first to widely offer overseas access, particularly between the eastern and western continents. Quad-band phones can pretty much operate anywhere and are popularly called "world phones."

Mobile Phone Smartphone

This is a fairly general term used to identify phones with advanced PC capabilities. It's still debated whether a smartphone is a phone with PDA capabilities or a PDA with phone capabilities, but there are a few key features: a QWERTY keyboard, a large color screen, and organizer functions.

Mobile Phone GPRS

Short for General Packet Radio Service, GPRS is a radio-based connection that allows relatively faster connections of up to 30 Kbps. GPRS first appeared in a group of phones now labeled 2.5G, a reference to its role in the transition from 2G to 3G mobile phone technologies.