Should there be a new word/ name for mobile phones?

That’s a Jos A Bank off-the-rack special: ‘3 suits for $299’. Venal corruption never looked so cheap.

Also, I love the subtextual B-story in this sketch:

“So, you, uh, like fat guys?”
“Oh, yeah!”

Stranger

Because they’re mainly used to perform computations?

(i.e. why do you object to “mobile/cell phone” but not “computer”?)

I was more just thinking of “pocket computers.”

As for the Frog Brothers, at least one of them later became a vampire, so how good at hunting could they be?

Various folks at various points have proposed “tracker”. A term I endorse.

Why “tracker”? Because that’s mostly what it does. It lets every law enforcement agency, app, and website you interact with track your behavior, whereabouts, communications patterns, or all three.

You may think you’re using it, but actually everybody else is using it to use you.

Cue Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics

In The Expanse, the futuristic cellphone-like devices are called “hand terminals”. I kinda like that, but it’s probably too long a name for such a common object.

The new word for them is “phones”, because that’s what everyone calls them. What we actually need a new word for is those antique devices that don’t do anything but voice calls.

In the Mars trilogy (first book published in 1992) the people from the then not too far away future of 2026-2100 have not-much described devices they call “lecterns” that were probably not far from a current tech iPad or equivalent tablet.

A “lectern” was both a recording device and a reading device. Folks ended up pretty much recording their life on it, both the minutiae and the real project work of whatever their occupation or avocation was. It also seemed to serve as a recreational device for reading. And a projector for the equivalent of PowerPoint slides at when giving a presentation. etc.

So from the PV of an SF author, a rather plausible extension of then-current tech.

Which is a weird choice because in computer parlance a ‘terminal’ is just the interface to the computer, a distinction that was made back when computers were refrigerator or room sized devices (minicomputers and mainframes) to which multiple ‘dumb’ terminals would be connected for direct input/output versus punchcards and magnetic tape. Today, computers for personal use (including smartphones) are so tightly integrated that there is generally no distinction between the computer and the interface, and the term has now come to mean a virtual interface to a remote machine or a program that provides a command line interface to the operating system. Why the world of The Expanse would harken back to the early days of digital computing, or force everyone to carry easily-damaged transparent communication/computation devices instead of implanting the device into the user with a direct visual, aural, or perhaps neural interface when that technology clearly exists is unclear.

Stranger

We sometimes say “device.” As in “could you check the ferry schedule on your device?”

“Device” is good, but it’s deliberately agnostic as to whether the “device” is a mobile phone, a tablet, a Chromebook-type crippled laptop, or a full-fledged PC / Windows or Mac / macOS laptop laptop.

IOW, a “device” is a thing that can run "app"s or at least a browser. While there’s a lot of overlap between the use cases of an e.g iPhone vs. an e.g. iPad, there are also a lot of use cases where one is much more usable than the other. Despite both running very, very similar software.

ISTM the OP is wanting a new term for e.g. iPhone-like thingies that does not encompass iPad-like thingies. Much less the much more capable general purpose portable supercomputer stations which laptops truly are.

I view the “terminal” part of “hand terminal” as describing the device as the user interface to the Internet. Seems appropriate to me. Yes, the device is a complete stand-alone computer, but its main purpose is to interface to the Internet (or whatever they call the solar-system-wide network of the Expanse universe). As to why they look and function pretty much exactly like current-day cellphones (except for the floating virtual screen), that’s a question that may never be answered.

In the UK they are just called ‘mobiles’. Have been for quite a while, I think.
When I moved back to the UK from the US a few years ago, I got puzzled looks when I talked about ‘cell phones’ until I caught on to the ideom…

How 'bout Petey, your Personal Tracker

Yeah, that’s what I think of it as. It’s a mobile computer. Portable computer is fine, as well.

If you say “portable computer,” I’m going to think of a laptop.

While it’s true that smartphones do plenty of other things besides make telephone calls, they do do that, and they’re—well, not the only device that does so, as long as landlines and simple “dumb” cell phones still exist, but they’re the only devices that many people use for that purpose when they do “talk on the phone.”

[quote=“Chronos, post:27, topic:1013384”] What we actually need a new word for is those antique devices that don’t do anything but voice calls
[/quote]

Landline.

[quote=“Love_Rhombus, post:1, topic:1013384, full:true”]
Since calling people is about 17th on the list of things people seem to do with them. [/quote]

I know this is MPSIMS but, cite? I will fully grant that the generations that have grown up using a smartphone their whole life seem to use it less for calls every day, but I’d still assume that it’s probably top 10 uses of a smartphone, though NOT by hours used. :wink:

I also think that it’s their very connectivity that makes them popular. You can (okay, historically) use a lot of computer functions offline, but especially with an ever-increasing move to streaming and social media for everything (rather than downloading/ripping to store audio or visual material) it’s the always on portable connection that seems key.

So rather than pocket comp, I’d think (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that it’s closer to a Universal Communicator.

There was once the category of “palmtop”, like this Gateway 2000 model.

A good description for modern pocket-sized devices

How about “Intimate Computer” ?
One step closer to the user than a “personal computer."