# Why "cell" phones? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 15, 2003, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960 "2003-06-15T04:31:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/1 "2003-06-15T04:31:34Z")
Not that the answer would change my view of life or anything… but I was wondering today why cell phones are called like that?. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/2 "2003-06-15T04:37:57Z")
The “cell” refers to the fact that each antenna in the system is the center of a roughly hexagonal unit, or “cell”, very much like a honeycomb. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/3 "2003-06-15T04:44:11Z")
It’s really short for _cellular_. The _cell_s in question are much as **Q.E.D.** describes. ---
**Author:** ![skyzoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e480ec/32.png) [@skyzoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skyzoo)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/4 "2003-06-15T04:45:54Z")
I have no answer, I’m curious too…and caught this thought - (can’t resist!) - perhaps it’s simply to **Sell** phones? This was probably a silly entry of mine. Og help me:smack:, why **are** they caleed cell phones. Interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/5 "2003-06-15T04:57:07Z")
QED seems to be right; I was in fact wondering if it had something to do with how the phone switches to different frequencies in different geographical areas. So the phone is the nucleous of the cell, and the boundary are the different tranmitters in a particular area. Thanks ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/6 "2003-06-15T05:02:37Z")
**Q.E.D.** has it. The cellular antenna system looks like a honecomb. Before the cellular system was invented portable telephones were the size of a briefcase. You needed a powerful transmitter to reach a receiving antenna potentially dozens of miles away. With the honeycomb system a receiving antenna is always close by (I don’t know but say a mile or two). As a result the phone itself needs a much less powerful transmitter. The magic that allows this to work is the switching system that passes you from one antenna to the next as you move through the cells (seamlessly and transparent to the user). Before computers this wasn’t really technically feasible which is why before the 80’s you didn’t see cellular telphones and only the very rich or important people had briefcase telephones. ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Random](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Joe\_Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Random)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/7 "2003-06-15T05:16:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ale \* > \*\*So the phone is the nucleous of the cell, and the boundary are the different tranmitters in a particular area. Thanks \*\* I don’t think that’s quite it. Each antenna is in the center of a cell (the nucleus, as it were), with the phones moving through this cellular grid, and being switched from one antenna to another as they move through the different cells. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/8 "2003-06-15T05:34:57Z")
Hmmm, well, that´s what I meant to say. 😛 But it´s 2:45 AM and prone to mangle my logic circuits. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![aeropl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f05b48/32.png) [@aeropl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aeropl)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/9 "2003-06-15T06:35:27Z")
hijack- How big are the cells (usually)? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/10 "2003-06-15T07:08:41Z")
As a matter of minor interest, they are called mobile phones in Australia (but cell phones in New Zealand). ---
**Author:** ![Fernmeldetruppe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@Fernmeldetruppe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fernmeldetruppe)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/11 "2003-06-15T08:03:08Z")
Cell radii can vary a lot. The radius could be as great as 100 km if the transmitter is on a mountain top in a very rural area. Urban cells are closer to 1-3 km, but can be as small as an intersection. ---
**Author:** ![green\_bladder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/73ab20/32.png) [@green\_bladder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/green_bladder)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/12 "2003-06-15T10:01:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Skogcat \* > \*\*As a matter of minor interest, they are called mobile phones in Australia (but cell phones in New Zealand). \*\* And pretty much all of Asia. Bits of Europe too. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/13 "2003-06-15T10:08:46Z")
A colleague who works in the US tells me that USians are starting to call them mobile phones rather than cellphones these days. Is this true? ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/14 "2003-06-15T10:22:08Z")
I think that nowadays there are wireless phone services that are not cellular. The only one I know offhand is PCS, but there may be others. So it’s not true anymore that all mobile phones are cell phones. (Am I right?) ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/15 "2003-06-15T12:13:48Z")
According to [Howstuffworks: How Cell Phones Work](http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone8.htm) > [@](#): > > PCS has smaller cells and therefore requires a larger number of antennas to cover a geographic area. PCS phones use frequencies between 1.85 and 1.99 GHz (1850 MHz to 1990 MHz). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/16 "2003-06-15T13:44:00Z")
> [@](#): > > As a matter of minor interest, they are called mobile phones in Australia (but cell phones in New Zealand). WAG: Before cellular telephones there were “radio telephones” that were called “mobile phones”. (Yes, I know that cellular phones use radio signals; but I think the technology was different back then.) I _think_ I remember that the first cell phones were called “mobile phones”, and at some point the terminology changed and they became “cell phones” – maybe to point out that they were not the old-tech phones? ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/17 "2003-06-15T13:47:01Z")
I don’t know if ground-based systems work like this, but for satellite moblie phone system, each cell is an area of unique encryption frequencies. That is, every caller within a cell is using a different frequency (or frequency pattern if they’re using a frequency-hopping encryption), but the neighboring cells are using the exact same set of frequencies. This lets each satellite handle many more simultaneous calls than it could if there were no cells. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/18 "2003-06-15T13:57:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by aeropl \* > How big are the cells (usually)? One of the charms of the cellular system is the ability to double the number of calls that can be handled at once by inserting another cell between two others. Of course, this reduces the geographical coverage of any one cell, and the handoff frequency of a moving phone becomes more frequent. So the size of the cells is determined not only by radio-frequency propagation considerations (how far the signal will travel), but how much traffic is expected in an area. In high-traffic areas that are geographically challenged, like Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, they even have micro-cells, where the coverage may be only a thousand feet or so. ---
**Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/19 "2003-06-15T16:34:36Z")
Ericsson provide a free, comprehensive guide to understanding telecommunications. [This link](http://www.ericsson.com/support/telecom/part-d/d-1-1.shtml) is to the introduction for the section on PLMN (Public Land Mobile Networks) technology. There’s quite a detailed overview of cells in sections D.1.1.2 and D.1.1.3. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2003, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960/20 "2003-06-15T16:49:58Z")
Note that digital (PCS) and analog mobile phones are “cell phones”. But for advertising to Joe Sixpack, wireless companies refer to analog phones as “cell phones” and digital, etc. for the newer ones. It’s really funny to see a commercial where they make fun of the noisy, unreliable old cell phones while touting their new (but still cellular) phones. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cell-phones/181960.md?page=2)