When you look inside a smart phone, what do you see? First, the radios. Most are dual-band or quad-band transceivers for the cellular bands used by the carriers. Today, all are 2G/3G capable. Each radio has its own power amplifier (PA). Next is the processor or processors. A typical unit today runs at 1 GHz, and most units have some DSP cores in there somewhere. The trend is toward a system-on-a-chip (SoC) rather than separate baseband chips and control functions.

A rather huge chunk of memory is also inside—RAM and flash both. Then there are the peripherals, namely the touchscreen, perhaps a separate keyboard, the microphone and speaker, and audio amps. Also inside are the auxiliary radios like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS, maybe even FM. Don’t forget the multiple antennas. And finally there’s the battery and all the chargers, regulators, converters, and power-management devices.

With only a handful of suppliers for these chips and other components, most smart phones look remarkably alike inside. They all do the same things, too. So how in the world do handset manufacturers really differentiate their product from all the others?

Nokia’s latest smart phone, the N8, has all the right stuff including version 3 of the popular Symbian OS, a touchscreen, a 12-Mpixel camera, and Ovi apps, but it hasn’t been popular. What differentiator isn’t working here?

It seems like a new smart phone is announced every week (Fig. 1). As I review them, I keep asking myself what makes them different or better. Why would I buy this one over that one or all the others? When the designers of a new smart phone get together to define their product, what are the real differentiators that will make it stand out and become a leader or the next hot product?

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