The term phablet (/ˈfæblət/, /-lɪt/) arose in the early 2010s to describe mobile devices combining or straddling the size formats of smartphones and tablets. The word is a blend word or portmanteau of phone and tablet.
By the late 2010s, the term had largely fallen into disuse, especially as phone sizes grew, in some case to the size of a small tablet, up to 180 mm (7.1 in), with wider aspect ratios.
The Nexus 6 (codenamed Shamu) is a phablet co-developed by Google and Motorola Mobility that runs the Android operating system. It is the successor to the Nexus 5, and the sixth smartphone in the Google Nexus series, which is a family of Android consumer devices marketed by Google and built by an original equipment manufacturer partner. The Nexus 6 and the HTC Nexus 9 served as the launch devices for Android 5.0 "Lollipop".
The Nexus 6's design and hardware is very similar to that of the second-generation Moto X, which was released around the same time, with the Nexus 6 being enlarged with higher specifications.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEC; stylized as SΛMSUNG; Korean: 삼성전자; lit. Tristar Electronics) is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation founded on 13 January 1969 and headquartered in Yeongtong District, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, accounting for 70% of the group's revenue in 2012, and has played a key role in the group's corporate governance due to cross ownership. It is majority-owned by foreign investors.
As of 2023, Samsung Electronics is the world's fourth-largest technology company by revenue, and its market capitalization stood at US$520.65 billion, the 12th largest in the world. It is the largest vendor of smartphones but was temporarily surpassed by Apple in 2023. Samsung is known most notably for its Samsung Galaxy brand consisting of phones such as its flagship Galaxy S series, popular midrange Galaxy A series as well as the premium Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Flip series. The company pioneered the phablet form factor with the Galaxy Note family. Samsung produces tablets consisting of the Galaxy Tab A series and Galaxy Tab S series. It has been the largest television manufacturer since 2006, both of which include related software and services like Samsung Pay and TV Plus. Samsung is a supplier of hospitality televisions for hotels and businesses which includes dedicated software that can be personalised to each business and is a supplier of displays for stadiums and venues. Samsung is also a major vendor of washing machines, refrigerators, computer monitors and soundbars.
A smart device is an electronic device, generally connected to other devices or networks via different wireless protocols (such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, near-field communication, Wi-Fi, NearLink, Li-Fi, or 5G) that can operate to some extent interactively and autonomously. Several notable types of smart devices are smartphones, smart speakers, smart cars, smart cards, smart thermostats, smart doorbells, smart locks, smart refrigerators, phablets and tablets, smartwatches, smart bands, smart keychains, smart glasses, smart TV, and many others. The term can also refer to a device that exhibits some properties of ubiquitous computing, including—although not necessarily—machine learning.
Smart devices can be designed to support a variety of form factors, a range of properties pertaining to ubiquitous computing and to be used in three main system environments: physical world, human-centered environments, and distributed computing environments. Smart homes indicate the presence of sensors and some detection devices, appliances, and a database to control them.
A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another, as opposed to those designed to remain stationary at a single location such as desktops and workstations. These computers usually include a display and keyboard that are directly connected to the main case, all sharing a single power plug together, much like later desktop computers called all-in-ones (AIO) that integrate the system's internal components into the same case as the display. In modern usage, a portable computer usually refers to a very light and compact personal computer such as a laptop, subnotebook or handheld PC, while touchscreen-based handheld ("palmtop") devices such as tablets, phablets and smartphones are called mobile devices instead.
The first commercially sold portable computer might be the 20-pound (9.1 kg) MCM/70, released 1974. The next major portables were the 50-pound (23 kg) IBM 5100 (1975), Osborne's 24-pound (11 kg) CP/M-based Osborne 1 (1981) and Compaq's 28-pound (13 kg), advertised as 100% IBM PC compatible Compaq Portable (1983). These luggable computers still required a continuous connection to an external power source; this limitation was later overcome by the laptop computers. Laptops were followed by lighter models such as netbooks, so that in the 2000s mobile devices and by 2007 smartphones made the term "portable" rather meaningless. The 2010s introduced wearable computers such as smartwatches.
The Samsung Galaxy Note series is a discontinued line of high-end flagship Android phablets manufactured, developed and marketed by Samsung Electronics. The line was primarily oriented towards pen computing; all Galaxy Note models shipped with a stylus pen, called the S Pen, and incorporate a pressure-sensitive Wacom digitizer. All Galaxy Note models also include software features that are oriented towards the stylus and the devices' large screens, such as note-taking, digital scrapbooking apps, tooltips, and split-screen multitasking. The line served as Samsung's flagship smartphone model, positioned and slotted above the Galaxy S series, and was part of the wider Samsung Galaxy series of Android computing devices.
The Galaxy Note smartphone series is noteworthy for being considered the first commercially successful examples of "phablets"—a class of smartphones with large screens that are intended to straddle the functionality of a traditional tablet with that of a phone, and having helped accelerate the trend of bigger screened smartphones becoming the norm around the mid 2010s. Samsung sold over 50 million Galaxy Note devices between September 2011 and October 2013.