I have been tasked to develop an application for my school that should be usable by smartphones. Now, I have never done any smartphone programming so there is a lot of research to be done regarding well, everything.
So, my question here is, if I have to develop an application with no specific smartphone in mind, what would the most generic kind then be?
Second, I am looking for some reading material where I can get an understanding of the common aspects of the various smartphones so that I can pick the tools to work with, that are generic across smartphones. Any suggestions?
For the lowest barrier to entry for this project, consider using HTML/JavaScript and running it (at first) as a web page. Then, if you decide this is the path you want to take, use PhoneGap (or similar) to create native apps from your existing work.