In the past few years, the computational performanceof smartphone devices has seen tremendous growth. Due to whichthe smartphone has become a suitable platform for variouscomputer-vision based applications which earlier was notpossible. In this paper, we study various methods through whichwe can achieve computer vision-based hand gesture recognitionnatively on smartphones. If smartphones can support handgesture recognition it can provide a new way to interact withmobile devices and overcome the hurdles of voice and touch-baseduser interface improving the user experience at the same time alsosupports other gesture-based applications. The techniques westudy are mainly vision-based since camera module is present onmost of the smartphones and it does not require other additionalsensors or other hardware. We have compared the variousmethods available based on algorithms used and correspondingaccuracy.