Now a Verizon district manager who oversees seven stores in central Illinois, Finch has witnessed a technological upheaval. "Nine years ago we offered six different handsets. I think we had one celulares chinos. Now we have 43 different devices," he said.

While cellphones that are strictly phones are still available, that category is on its way out, judging from national statistics.

Nearly half of U.S. mobiles android subscribers now own smartphones, according to information released earlier this year by Nielsen Mobile Insights. That's up from 36 percent of last year.

Two-thirds of those buying new devices in recent months have chosen a smartphone over a traditional cell phone, according to Nielsen.

In the beginning

Before Americans became entranced with mobile devices, of course, there was long love affair with the landline telephone.

We have a long telephonic history. The first telephone exchange was installed in Hartford, Conn., in 1877, with the first exchange linking major cities established between New York and Boston in 1883.

The first automatic telephone exchange was installed in 1892 while the first rotary dial telephone was developed in 1923 in France.

Although the first commercial mobile telephone service became available in St. Louis in 1946, the mobile telephone would not become common for another four decades.

But the mobile phone has definitely become common in the 21st century. Now we not only have a device that serves as a phone but as a camera, clock, light, stock ticker, weather service, TV set, movie screen (admittedly a small one), typewriter and, yes, you can even send Morse code - only now it's called texting.

So many choices

The choices are numerous: There's the Razr Maxx made by Motorola. This is an el mejor smartphone, which means that the software was designed by Google.

There's also the Samsung Galaxy S II ($200 to $230 with a two-year contract from AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile). It's lightweight and quite popular. Another highly-rated phone is the HTC Amaze 4G ($260 with two-year contract from T-Mobile).

There's also the wildly-successful iPhone from Apple. Even those of us who don't have an iPhone, of course, have heard about it.tienda online

But if there are winners in the smart device marketplace, there are also losers.

The BlackBerry had been the smartphone of choice, "once a badge of success in the corporate world," as the Wall Street Journal recently noted.