Computing, Computing…beep boop sqeeek, computation compleat: this is not a tape.
WERKING!!!
I always liked mobile it works for everything you do on the go
I always liked the German “Handy” … cos it’s great for porn.
This sort of icon is still used in software all over the world:
I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I used a floppy disk.
Died to become the icon of saving!
I can, 2007… I used them as fkashdrives for school cause it looked cool and a flash drive was a luxury in my country. I lost a lot* of info because of an error and never used one again
They held like 100M. They were gargantuan.
It should have been PDAs. For some reason that just didn’t catch on.
To me, I’ve always associated the PDA with devices w/o the phone capability, pre-smartphones. Those existed. Looked similar to modern smartphones, just bulkier and with less capability. That’s been the distinction for me.
Frankly, the only other word for (cell)phone or mobile has been smartphone. I don’t think we have a better word for them yet (pocket computer just doesn’t grab you).
They didn’t catch on because in the era they existed it was very difficult to achieve any kind of connectivity with them to the outside world. By the time that was able to be ubiquitous, smartphones were already happening.
What do you call your phone? By its brand?
I called mine Marvin.
I call mine Tim
I call mine by where it’s made, as I do my Davenport.
I enjoy my China, and also my China, and how could I forgot my China…
Don’t forget the china, me old china.
I call mine Left Hand Free since half the time i am using it one handed.
My dad once told me of, IIRC, a Sprint ad wherein the then-president of Sprint came on screen and said something like “you know, with all the things these can do now, it’s a wonder we still call them phones.” I never saw the ad myself, but it seems to be saying something similar to what you are saying.
My favorite thing about smartphones is that the “call” icon is an old-school telephone handset. I’ll bet younger people have never thought about what that thing is even supposed to be. My second-favorite is the gear icon for “settings” - like, what the fuck does a gear ring have to do with a list of options you can select? That isn’t even remotely close to what gears are used for in real-world mechanical devices.
I’ll bet younger people have never thought about what that thing is even supposed to be.
Oh cmon.
Yes, this supposedly (according to some meme) happened with the save symbol, because a floppy is actually something a lot of today’s people have never seen or touched.
That sort of a handset for a telephone though? Do you think they haven’t seen shows or movies? Never saw a playset with a very classic model plastic phones?
Even my two year old can recognize a telephone handset, pick it up and hold it to her ear while saying “Hewwo?”
One time I heard a colleague called the settings/gear icon in Windows a flower. I’ve also heard somebody refer to the PuTTY icon as “the two penguins”
Are we referring to this icon? Found here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PuTTY
If so I see no resemblance with a penguin at all.
Yep that’s the one. It was on the taskbar so significantly smaller than it looks here. I think he thought the lightning bolt was the beaks.
Sometimes late at night I squint my eyes to look at the icon and, for a fleeting moment, I can see two penguins.
So either your friend has terrible eye sight, was high, or is an idiot.
Worse.
“Pocket-Sized Portable Computer with Telecommunicative Radio Capability” is quite a long name, people would just get tired of saying that and call it by a simpler name.
Oh wait.
To pull terms from a couple different sci-fi book series I like, we could go for Hand Terminals or Scribs. I like both, the former when I’m being grandiose and the latter when I’m feeling cute.
Didn’t we had Personal Digital Assistant before?
Hand Terminals imply you no longer have local storage, which wouldn’t describe smartphones today.
Also, I hate the idea of a “Hand Terminal” where everything is on the cloud. I mean…
spoiler
Eros Incident, comms all dead. Screen doesnt even turn on.
With actual phones, they could’ve used something like Briar!
Ironically the Brits got this right with “mobiles”. What’s the key characteristic of a cellphone? That it is portable and mobile.
but the key characteristic of a car is also the mobility.
🤔
Not if c/fuckcars gets their way.
Is the term “Pocket PC” still trademarked? Let’s start calling them that.
PSPC w/ TRC lol
🎵Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me…🎵
Maybe since you can do your entire Job on it we can call it a hand Job
Or perhaps since we have it in our face all day we can call it a facial.
Or since we watch so much porn on it we can call it a video player.
Germans call it a handy.
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Portable Handheld Omnidirectional Networking Equipment is also pretty long, we could probably shorten it.
This guy phones.
We could make that an acronym!
No it’s not… Because we know what a cellphone is.
In star trek they called it tapes because they didn’t know what they would be called in the future.
Moreover, it’s called a cellphone as a colloquial term. They’re correct nomenclature is “smartphone”.
You’re going to play “moreover” and “nomenclature” then fuck up a “they’re/their”? Hang your head.
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I also used colloquial. But then again auto correct is a bitch.
Contemporaneously, in some of Larry Nivens’ fiction, it was called a “data brick”.
When you feel like you are getting too attached to the metaphor of the hour, abstract it up a level.
I think video is still referred to as “footage”. That is, how many feet long the tape is.
Is it worse that I still call them “telephones”?
p.s. I am British, which gives me some allowance for using strange, historical words.
Since you are British, international law allows you to call it a “wireless” if you like.
Thank you, and I shall do so. Very much appreciated :)
My grandmother said the same when I showed her a Motorola Droid in 2009. She said “that’s a pocket computer”.
We should have immediately called “smartphones” padds.
In German, a phone is called a “Handy”
In America, a handjob is called a “Handy”
In Germany, they employ the whole person, not just the hand!
I have yet to be actually paid for any hand job, in the USA or Germany.
And the girl a handmaiden
