Smartphone lingo
Smartphones are ubiquitous in today’s world. They are part of our lives. It is important to know one or two words in smartphone lingo. Verily verily, I say unto you, if you do, you get discounts from gadget stores. I do.
Much of the vocabulary for smartphones is to do with the display. Probably because this is what you interact with. You neither see the chip nor the memory.
To begin with, display size is the measure of the diagonals. Why diagonals? It is nostalgic. The early tube displays for TVs and computers were circular. The display size was actually the circumference.
It did not matter where you measured, the size would be the same. They chose the diagonal as a standard measurement. Today’s displays are rectangular and the diagonal measurement is an incongruity but is still used, a romance with the past.
There are basically two types of display, LCD (liquid crystal display) and LED (light emitting diode). IPS (in-plane switching) is a modern day LCD display that has greater viewing angles and greater colour reproduction.
Super LCD is one where the LCD and the touch screen are one unit. Retina Display is a Super LCD used by Apple from iPhone 4. Retina HD is an upgrade of Retina that Apple used on iPhone 8. Apple switched to LED starting with iPhone 10, the AMOLED Retina HD.
LED displays, just as good as their LCD counterparts, have their categories. AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic LED) is one that has excellent viewing angles and very good resolution.
Super AMOLED is one where the AMOLED and touch screen are one unit. Infinity display is a trade-mark for Samsung. That is the edge to edge AMOLED that gives the sea-flow imagery. It was introduced with Samsung Galaxy S10.
The computer chip for your smartphone is in general terms either quad-core or octa-core. Well, well, think of that as a processor with either four or eight engine-rooms.
One more thing, the memory. There is RAM (Random Access Memory) and there is storage or ROM (Read-Only Memory). RAM is only available when your smartphone is on. It is all like your desk. RAM is the top of the desk, the working area. Storage are the drawers where files are kept.
Calling storage ROM is not technically correct but is acceptable in ordinary parlance. When you sit on your desk, you pull folders from your drawers to the desktop. The smartphone does pretty much the same.
A good smartphone must have a minimum of 2 GB RAM and 32 GB storage is adequate for the average user. If money is not an object, why not? 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage. Enough for now.
