Often confused and misused, Android and smart phones are two very
distinct things.
Nowadays the two words have become likely synonyms, for the simple
reason that mostly Android and smart phones are always paired. Despite
the frequency at which we use the construction ‘
Android Smart Phone ’, these are two independent things that don’t even fall into the same category.
As the distinction between the two is quite confusing nowadays, it
can turn out rather hard to make choices. For example, if you are
willing to purchase a new phone, what should you buy? An Android phone?
If yes, are all the Androids smart phones and do all the smart phones
have Android?
But in order to answer these questions, we need to clarify once and
for all what is the distinction between Android and smart phone.
OS versus Gadget
Reduced to three simple words, that’s the difference between Android
and smart phone: the first one is an OS (operating system) and the
second one is a gadget.
The smart phone is basically a mini-computer that runs on Android. Just like a laptop can run on Windows.
This will be further explained once we understand exactly what Android is and what smart phones are.
What is Android?
Android is an operating system, owned by Google since 2005. Android
is Linux-based and it is fairly one of the most famous operating systems
nowadays. In fact, Android is so easily to be confused with smart
phones because of the frequent pairing of the two.
Android’s massive popularity emerged in the fact that users are able
to change all the app codes, allowing them to create new, personalized
one, suitable for each and every particular taste. As well, another
thing that piled up to Android’s worldwide fame is Google Play, where
investors come with new applications all the time, most of them free of
charge. Basically, Android’s success is based on its flexibility and its
ability of being more of a developers’ web then simply a stiff
operating system.
Android was featured in some of the most famous smart phone lines,
which peaked into an avalanche of popularity for the above stated
operating system. Surely, you’ve seen the mark ‘Android phone’ on
Samsung’s Galaxy series, Sony Xperia and so on. There are many phones
featuring Android. Usually, all the phones that run on Android are
necessarily smart phones- most definitely normal phones are not able to
run Android.
Android comes in different variants, always improving the existing
operating system- there is a succession of Android variations, the
newest one being Android 4.2.2 Jelly bean- the 17th Google update since
the launch of Android. Each new Android version brings new features and
allows you to do more on your smart phone.
What is a smart phone?
Now that we’ve established that Android is an independent operating system, we can explain what smart phones are.
Smart phones are obviously cell phones- they are called smart because
they allow you to perform multiple tasks on them- tasks fairly similar
to those that you normally perform on your computer. If it is to
generalize, smart phones are portable computers, of reduced dimensions.
Therefore, every phone that can perform the tasks a computer would do
(read and send emails, reply to messages, listen to music, watch videos,
use social media, upload files and so on) can be called a smart phone.
While all the Android-running phones are smart phones, the situation
is not the same when it comes to smart phones. Not all the smart phones
run on Android. Currently, on the market are several operating systems
that are quite popular- there is the iOS (Apple’s operating system),
Windows, Blackberry’s operating system and so on. Therefore, an iPhone-
which is a smart phone, will run on iOS, while Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge,
for example, will run on Android.
It’s just like choosing a computer or a
Tablet PC,it
is simply the gadget, while the system that runs on it has various
names and you can choose the operating system you prefer- for example,
when you buy a laptop, you have a Mac or a Windows. The same with the
cell phones- the operating system is an entirely different business then
the gadget itself.
Surely, the operating system comes preinstalled on the gadget and
you’ll always have them as a pair, but essentially they are two distinct
things that should not be confused.
In conclusion, even though smart phones and Android are more like
synonyms nowadays, they are different and each one of them mean
something else- as simple as that: Android is an operating system, an
open source to all the developers, while smart phones are
mini-computers- phones that can perform various tasks, often able to
replace computers. There are non Android smart phones, but pretty much,
there aren’t non-smart phone phones running on Android.