Designing for the Right Device

When designing for mobile, think about the different classes of devices. The line between devices is not well defined, making designing for mobile more challenging. Instead, the boundaries shift constantly. Despite this, some simple guidelines exist to help you determine what device class to target. The mobile devices available today can be broken down in to a few broad classes:

• Feature Phones: These are the most common device type. Feature phones usually come in candy bar, clamshell or slider form. They have a 12-key layout and typically come with voice, messaging and data capabilities. Most feature phones sold in the past three years also come with built-in digital cameras and media players. Companies typically target these phones to the general consumer.
• Smart Phones: Smart phones share the same features as a feature phone with two primary differences: Its ability to run additional third-party applications and a slightly larger screen. Smart phones typically use a more full featured operating system and companies market them as them as advanced multimedia devices to consumers or as productivity devices to the business sector.
• PDAs: These devices — evolved from the PDAs of the ‘90s — now often include voice, messaging, and data capabilities. PDAs have much in common with the smart phone but differ in that much of their functionality is primarily oriented towards organizational tasks rather then voice communications. Another difference is that PDAs often include QWERTY keyboard and stylus in place of the 12-key layout on normal phones. They also feature a larger screen that can often switch between portrait and landscape mode.
• Voice-Only Phones: These devices are typically extremely low-cost phones aimed at developing markets and are not relevant in the context of the Mobile Web.

Feature Phones lead the market by a large margin but bear in mind that the borderline between the Feature Phones and Smart Phones is constantly shifting towards the Smart Phone category – the newest Feature Phones are often equal in functionality to yesterday’s Smart Phones.