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Smartphones: They are called that for a reason. Over the last few years our mobile handsets have been transformed into portable computers packed with an ever increasing digital intelligence. Today, devices like the iPhone pack the same punch of one of the iconic Cray supercomputers that dazzled computer scientists in the 1980s. But, according to Rich Howard, former head of Wireless Research at Bell Labs, it is wrong to assume that this raw computing power is used for smartphones most obvious functions. “Most of what it does is make the communication work, not running some app you've pulled up,” he says.