Cell Phone Messaging Features

Cell phone's messaging features have to do with its ability to browse the Internet, send and receive text and multimedia messages as well as email through your cell phone.

Mobile web browsing. Some cell phones contain or accept software that will turn your handset into a mini wireless Internet browser. Depending on the model, the ability to browse the Internet with your cell phone varies. The most basic version of mobile web browsing only allows access to text-only pages specifically designed to be viewed through cell phones, while more advanced models enable the user to surf and see full websites.

Multimedia messaging. Also known as MMS, multimedia messaging is a capability that allows you to send and receive messages that contain not only text, but also other "media" such as pictures, video-clips, graphics, audio-clips, etc.

HTML Web Browsing. HTML is the standard code used to build Internet pages. Some cell phones are enabled to view full web sites that contain HTML codes.

Text messaging (SMS). SMS stands for short messaging service, or the capability for a phone to send and/or receive short text messages. These text messages can be sent either to another cell phone--through the phone number--or to an email address.

Email client. Some cell phones have the ability to send and receive emails, using such servers as POP, IMAP and STMP.

Instant messenger built-in. As the name suggests, instant messaging (IM) provides extremely rapid chat between two or more users. IM differs from other kinds of messaging such as SMS in the sense that it uses the Internet as the communication platform. Some of the popular IM applications are Yahoo! and AOL instant messengers.

Traditionally, IM "chat" occurs between personal computers. However, cell phones with built-in IM capabilities are enabled to send and receive instant messages--from and to PCs and other IM-enabled cell phones.

Also, IM allows the user to set up a "buddy list," and to see whether any particular user on this list is online (available) or not before the message is sent.