- Palm - Palm is the hardware company that manufacturers the Treo line of smartphones. The company was known for a time as PalmOne after the Operating System portion of the company was spun off as PalmSource....

- Palm OS - Palm OS is the operating system used on the Palm Pilot and Treo lines of PDAs and smartphones sold by Palm, as well as those sold by many other companies, including Sony. ACCESS, the company that abs...

- PalmSource - PalmSource is the operating system division of Palm that was spun off in 2002. Palm then renamed itself palmOne, but has since renamed itself once again back to Palm. In 2004 PalmSource acquired Chi...

- Pantech Curitel - Pantech Curitel is the third largest South Korean manufacturer of mobile phones, behind Samsung and LG. Pantech primarily makes handsets for their home market, but has been making inroads into the No...

- passive matrix - Passive matrix displays are a low-cost form of LCD that were used widely when color displays were first appearing on mobile phones. They have been replaced by newer TFT LCD technologies that, while m...

- PCN (Personal Communication Network) - This standard corresponds to a high-frequency version of the GSM standard. ...

- PDA - Personal Digital Assistant. A personal organiser aloowing you to store information and use computer-style programs. Some PDAs combine with phone functionality. ...

- PDC - PDC stands for Personal Digital Cellular, and is the 2G network offered by Japan's NTT DoCoMo. PDC works on the 800MHz frequency band and is not compatible with CDMA, GSM, or UMTS networks or devices...

- PDP (Packet Data Protocol) - The primary protocol(s) used for packet data communications on a packet data network, e.g. TCP/IP on the internet. ...

- Personal information manager (PIM) - A program for organising contacts, appointments, tasks, and notes. ...

- Pico Cell - Very small cell in a mobile network for boosting capacity within buildings. ...

- pixel - A pixel is a single point, or dot, in a digital photograph or on a mobile phone (or other) display. The number of pixels in an image or display that make up the X and Y axes are often referred to as ...

- PoC - PoC is a VOIP based PTT standard developed by the OMA. It allows for Push-To-Talk functionality over a data network, such as GPRS or 1xRTT. This is in contrast to the system used on Motorola's iDEN ...

- Podcast - Podcasting is a method of publishing sound files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription usually at no cost....

- POP - The Post Office Protocol is a protocol used for the retrieval of email from a mail server. The most common version in use today is POP3. POP is being replaced to some extent by IMAP, which functions...

- PSD - Packet Switched Data is a technology where the communication pipe is shared by several users, thus making it very efficient. The data is sent to a specific address with a short delay. Charging is ba...

- push email - Push email is a method of having email received for a user on a server automatically forwarded to a mobile device. This works by keeping an active connection open between the mobile device and the se...

- Push-To-Talk - Push-To-Talk is a system where mobile phone users can perform walkie-talkie like instant communications with each other. The connections are one-way (half-duplex), and are typically announced on the ...

- QCIF - A pixel resolution of 176 pixels by 144 pixels. Also known as Quarter CIF since it is half the width and height of the CIF resolution.br/br/ br/br/ ...

- quad-band - Quad-band generally refers to a device that supports 4 different GSM frequency bands. A quad-band device will work pretty much anywhere in the world where there is GSM service.br/br/ Also known ...

- Qualcomm - Qualcomm is a technology company based in San Diego, California. It is the developer and creator of CDMA technology, MediaFLO digital television, and BREW, an application platform supported by most C...

- QVGA - A pixel resolution of 320 pixels by 240 pixels. Also known as Quarter VGA since it is half as high and half as wide as VGA.br/br/ br/br/ ...

- QWERTY - QWERTY refers to the order of the top row of alphabetic keys on a standard English keyboard. Keyboards for other languages typically have different layouts, leading to references such as QWERTZ and o...

- Research In Motion - Research In Motion, commonly referred to as RIM or by their BlackBerry brand, is a Waterloo, Canada based company that manufactures mobile phones and the back-end server software (BlackBerry Enterpris...

- resolution - Though technically inaccurate, the term resolution in the world of mobile phone displays and digital cameras refers to the number of columns and rows of pixels. A display with 240 pixel columns and 3...

- RFID - RFID is a bar code like technology that allows for data to be transmitted from an RFID tag to compatible reader. RFID tags can be passive in nature, deriving their power from the very radio frequenci...

- Roaming - The ability to make and receive calls on the same mobile phone when travelling outside the area of the home network operator ...

- RS-MMC - The RS-MMC memory card format is a smaller form factor version of the MMC card specification. The RS in the name stands for "reduced size". The cards measure roughly 24mm x 18mm in size and can be u...

- RSS - RSS is a family of loosely related XML document formats used by news feed clients, often called feed readers, on devices such as mobile phones and personal computers. ATOM is a newer, competing forma...

- S40 - S40 is the platform that Nokia runs on its feature phone handset models. Unlike S60, it does not run on top of the Symbian OS, but rather runs on a fully proprietary system. Formerly known as Series...

- S60 - Formerly known as Series 60, Nokia's S60 is a smartphone platform that sits on top of the Symbian OS operating system. Originally designed for smartphones without touchscreens, Nokia has indicated th...

- S80 - S80, previously known as Series 80, is the software platform that Nokia runs on top of the Symbian OS for its 9000 series of communicator devices. Nokia has announced that S80's functionality will be...

- S90 - S90, previously known as Series 90, is the software platform that Nokia runs on top of the Symbian OS in its 77xx series of touchscreen enabled multimedia devices. Nokia has announced that S90's func...

- Samsung - Samsung is the largest mobile phone maker in its home market of South Korea, and the third largest in the world. In addition to mobile phones and related devices, the company also manufacturers thing...

- Sanyo - Sanyo is a Japanese manufacturer that produces CDMA and UMTS (WCDMA) based handsets for sale in Japan and North America. At one time it had entered into an agreement with Nokia to produce CDMA handse...

- SAR - The SAR, or specific absorption rate, of a mobile phone is the amount of RF energy it exposes its user to. In the United States, mobile phones need to have a SAR rating of 1.6 watts per kilogram (W/k...

- SD - Secure Digital cards, most commonly referred to simply as SD cards, are flash memory based media cards based on a standard developed by the Secure Digital Card Association. The SD design was based on...

- Service provider - The company that sends you bills and has your signature on a contract. ...

- Siemens - Siemens is a Munich, Germany based electronics firm. At one time a major manufacturer of GSM mobile phones, the Siemens Mobile portion of the company was sold off to Taiwan's BenQ in 2005 to form Ben...

- SIM card - A SIM card is a small card that contains a mobile network subscriber's account information. This allows the phone using the card to attach to a mobile network. About half the size of a typical stamp...

- SMS - SMS stands for Short Message Service and is a standard used on mobile phones that allows for brief text based messages to be sent from one mobile phone to another. The basic SMS is 160 characters in...

- SMTP - SMTP is short for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, an application protocol used to send mail from one user to another. it is the standard for email transmission used on the Internet. SMTP does not pro...

- Sony Ericsson - Sony Ericsson, the London, UK based joint venture formed in 2001 by Japan's Sony Corporation and Sweden's LM Ericsson, is a manufacturer of mobile phones and Bluetooth devices.br/br/ Also known ...

- standards body - A group of people or organizations that define technology standards. Examples include the International Telecommunications Union and the IEEE.br/br/ br/br/ ...

- Standby time - The length of time a battery can power a mobile phone when it is switched on but not making or receiving calls...

- Stylus - A penlike device for navigation and data input. Most handhelds have a slot for storing a stylus. ...

- subscriber - Subscriber is the term used to refer to a person that has an account with a mobile network carrier. They are called such because they subscribe to the carrier's mobile phone services.br/br/ b...

- Symbian - Symbian Ltd is the software firm that develops and licenses the Symbian OS. Originally spun off from Psion, a maker of PDA devices, the company now focuses on its operating system products. The comp...

- Symbian OS - The Symbian OS is the operating system developed and sold by Symbian Ltd. The OS is used primarily by Nokia with its S60 user interface and by Sony Ericsson with its UIQ user interface, but the Symbi...

- Synchronisation - The process of exchanging data between a handheld and PC so that changes are reflected on files stored in both computers. ...

- Talk-time - The length of time a battery can power a mobile phone when making or receiving calls...

- TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) - Used to provide reliable data transfer between two IP endpoints. Not as fast as UDP....

- TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and Internet Protocol (IP) together define the basic rules for how information is transmitted across the internet (as well as on most LANs) in packet form. ...

- TDMA - TDMA stands for time division multiple access. TDMA is a multiplexing method that divides network connections into time slices, where each device on the TDMA network connection gets one or more time ...

- Telematics - A generic term for a wireless network supporting the collection and dissemination of data. Static, or fixed applications including SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition), which is used in th...

- telephoto - Telephoto, when speaking of cameras, refers to a higher magnification lens that is able to direct a narrow but magnified view of a scene to the camera's image sensor. What focal length lenses pass fo...

- TETRA - Terrestrial Trunked Radio; a European developed digital private mobile radio technology which is now being extensively deployed worldwide...

- text message - The term "text message" is used to refer to messages sent using the SMS service. Users in North America and the UK typically refer to SMS messages as text messages, and the act of sending a text mess...

- text talk - Text talk is a form of shorthand used on mobile phones when sending SMS (or "text") messages and during instant messaging. Examples of such are: AFAIK ("as far as I know"), CU ("see you"), 2DAY ("tod...

- TFT - Thin-film transistor, commonly known as TFT, is a type of LCD display. TFT displays are what are commonly referred to as active matrix displays, and offer a superior viewing experience when compared ...


- tri-band - Tri-band generally refers to a device that supports 3 different GSM frequency bands. A tri-band device will work in most parts of the world where there is GSM service, though not as well as would a q...

- TrueSync - A technology which enables the optimal synchronisation of calendars, address books, action lists and memoranda. It enables multi-point, one-step synchronisation of wireless and wireline devices, deskt...