Consider, for example, the US$199.99 LG enV, available through Verizon. It supports Bluetooth 2.0. You can use it as a laptop modem. It plays MP3 files and video files in stereo. You can sync it with your PC. Its calendar and e-mail application supports vCard. Its 2-megapixel camera has auto focus and a flash. It has a speakerphone, text-to-speech capability, speaker-independent voice recognition and voice-recording. The feature list goes on and on: QWERTY keyboard, turn-by-turn navigation, wireless sync and microSD support.

This phone isn't considered a "smartphone" by most industry analysts. Why? Because third-party applications for phones like this must be written to support BREW or Java, rather than natively.

Try explaining that to your average phone buyer.

3. 'Smartphone' was never a good label

Out of all the categories the industry has come up with to define and differentiate phones with advanced features -- "communicator phone," "PDA phone," "converged device," "Internet phone" -- "Smartphone" is by far the least meaningful.