There’s a reason they’re not called dumbphones, people. For savvy, on-the-go types, smartphones leap far beyond the capabilities of that quaint twentieth-century relic known as the mobile phone, offering advanced computing ability, connectivity and other features that its older cousin could only dream of.

But even the sharpest owners don’t always take full advantage of what their smartphone has to offer. Caught up in the dazzle of cool apps and other built-in wizardry, it’s easy for users to miss out on the potential of the smartphone to be a powerful, pocket-sized mobile office and nerve center for your business, and not just a spiffy accessory.

Take the big kahuna of smartphones: Apple’s iPhone. Sure, it makes you feel cool to whip out the iPhone on a crowded street and poke at the screen, knowing you’re the envy of all who look on. But the iPhone does much more than look good. It connects directly to enterprise mail servers like Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino via Exchange ActiveSync, giving you access to push email, calendar events, and contacts. It also boasts features such as fast inbox switching, support for multiple exchange accounts, unified inbox and even the ability to create calendar invitations for when you want to coordinate that client happy hour.

Not only that, but there are oodles of productivity-oriented apps available for iPhone 4, including Workday -- which lets you remotely review and approve HR and business management processes, including time-off requests, expense reports and even hires -- and InerTrak, which tracks the time spent on projects, hourly rates, and billed or unbilled hours.

Workday is a free app, so if you don’t like it, no big whoop.

Research in Motion’s BlackBerry has had to endure the nickname “CrackBerry,” but business folks who know their smartphones know that there’s a lot to the BlackBerry beyond the drug-inspired nickname.

From health care to retail, professionals in an array of industries have found it to be an invaluable tool. Let’s say your beat is securities. Whether you work for a firm or you’re an independent broker, your BlackBerry can be configured with third-party apps to help you respond quickly to market changes using market data, order systems and more; stay connected to your clients with up-to-the-minute news and data; and make you more agile by connecting wirelessly to BlackBerry’s Business Intelligence or Sales Force Automation applications.

Don’t think the granddaddy of handhelds, Palm, hasn’t kept up with the times. The Palm Pre is perfect for you if you’re in sales or any other line that requires you to be on the move. Using Microsoft Direct Push technology, the Pre can bring together your calendars and contacts from an endless variety of places, and using its Palm webOS platform, you can run tons of apps (such as its dynamite flight itinerary app, Flightview) at the same time.

Google’s magic touch has continued with its introduction of its Android operating system, which runs on a broad array of smartphones. The secret of Android’s success is not unlike that of Google’s: You can get it to work just about anywhere at anytime. That comes in handy if you’re, say, part of your company’s accounting team. Quarter-end, and especially year-end, mean you’re on call at all times. Vacation? Not until the numbers are in, buddy.

If you’re away from the office and need to crunch some numbers, there’s a free Android-powered app called Spreadsheet (by Byte Squared) that has more than 100 functions and is completely compatible with Microsoft Excel and other XLS-dependent programs.

Mmin’s HandyCalc is a calculator app that’s as powerful as that paperback-sized graphing calculator you used to lug to your accounting courses. And if your worst fear is running low on power while you’re just about to sprint to your financial bottom line, GeekYouUp’s Battery Widget will tell you how much juice you have left. (Both of those are also free, by the way.) For more general needs, ThinkFree Mobile is an office suite for Android that lets you view, edit and create Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, plus manage them all with a linked online file manager.

Then there’s Microsoft. To the surprise of no one, the Redmond redwood has a hand in how virtually all the smartphones above do their thing. The list of Microsoft productivity tools available for smartphones is scary-long. A few brief examples:

• Looking into financing for your small business? DolphLarson’s Pocket Amortization lets you calculate loan payments based on the term of the loan and interest rate, and it has a scheduler that shows the actual, final cost of your loan.
• In your business, you shake a lot of hands and collect a lot of business cards. Instead of letting the cards gather dust in a desk drawer, put them on your Smartphone with Dymo’s CardScan Mobile. Working with Microsoft’s Mobile OS, it photographs a business card and automatically inserts all information from it into your phone’s contact list.
• If your work depends on keeping your nose on the news, the free AP Mobile app gathers national and world news, as well as local dispatches from more than 1,200 newspapers.

Also, don’t forget that Microsoft’s dominant Office suite is Smartphone-ready.

It’s a big, brave new world for smartphone owners. And all this, of course, doesn’t even make mention of the myriad of smartphone accessories such as Bluetooth headsets, mounts and docking stations, skins, chargers – all that good stuff. For more information on these products and more, take a jog through BestBuyMobile.com. And for all of your other business needs, check out our Small Business Center on BestBuy.com.