When "smartphone" came into vogue, entire sets of features -- PIM (Personal Information Manager) functionality and, later, Internet access -- all went together in this kind of phone, and none of these features was available in "regular" phones.

Back then, the only thing you could do with a cell phone was make calls. Then along came a radical new class of super phones. An enormous gulf separated the two types, which forced us to come up with a way to differentiate them. The handset universe was clearly binary.

Even as recently as five years ago, you could take the most advanced cell phone and place it side-by-side with the dumbest "smartphone," and the difference between the two would be vast. They looked different. They worked different. And their list of features was utterly incomparable.

But that world is gone forever. Most "high-end" features, such as e-mail, IM, games, video, camera, FM radio and speakerphone, can be found in cheap phones most analysts would not consider "smartphones."

Phone choices now are the opposite of binary. There is a near perfect gradation starting with the most austere, feature-poor phone, moving up gradually through hundreds of options right up to the most feature-rich phones. And some of those phones at the very high end are not considered "smartphones" by the experts.