I had this shower thought earlier and I actually wanted to post it in that community. The name I came up with was SmartWalkman, but later I realized that Walkman is Sony specific, so I doubt other companies would’ve gone for that name, but I didn’t want to let this shower thought slip so here I am now asking you guys.
Even if they wouldn’t go for the name, Walkman was a generic name for this category of devices, at least here in Poland. You wouldn’t go buy a cassette player, you’d go buy a Walkman, not necessarily a Sony made one. So I could definitely see people calling their devices Smart Walkman
I think the main issue is too many syllables
Maybe smartman but that sounds kinda weird
Yeah, it was genericized very quickly.
Here to point out Personal Electronic Terminal was very much on the table at one point
- Touchphone
- Voicetransmitter
- Walky-Talky
- Mini-PC
The alternatives are endless
Fun fact: In Germany, mobile phones are called “Handy” instead of “mobile phone”
And phone plans are flats. Iirc that is also unique to German. It’s always interesting when languages steal from other languages and butcher the words.
And phone plans are flats.
You must mean Flatrate? A term for a flat/fixed price with unrestricted volume (the default for home internet; mobile phone plans have variance).
I’m not aware of anything being called “flats” in German. Could be an abbreviation in circles though.
Yeah, flat is colloquial speech for Phone Flatrate. Flats being the plural.
And if I remember correctly that only was the name of one company’s model of mobile phones but it stuck like e.g. Tempo for tissues in general.
PDA was probably the most common during the 90s and I think until iPhones and android, black berry phones were considered PDAs.
A lot of stuff in the 80s/90s used the suffix “dex” (after rolodex) so I could also picture something like “mobidex” or “pocket dex”. Or there was netbooks so we might just call them netdex…
“pocket dex”
Nintendo would sue so quickly
Depends on the timing but Pokedex is clearly itself derivative of rolodex so im not sure that would actually work in Nintendo’s favor
It’s a Pokemon Index.
Pocket monster index
Duuuude, mobidex has such a cool sound to it. Real star trek vibes. I wish.
Computer phone. I mean, it is a combination of a computer and a mobile phone so why not?
Bricks.
TinyTellies ©®™
Fuck you that’s mine
This is the correct answer
For a brief period of time, they (mostly journalists) tried calling them App Phones to differentiate from other phones with touch screens. There was also the rumor leading up to the iPhone that it would be called the iWalk.
Pocket PC
Handy (as we do in Germany).
Every time I’ve gotten a handy, it has been by some dude in a store. That’s why I keep coming back once every year or two; he knows how to provide a good handy.
PDA - Personal Digital Assistant.
That’s what they were called in the before times (Palm Pilot) before they got merged with the cell phone. Lots of old timers called a smartphone a PDA until they got really popular.
Screenphones, because they only have a screen and no buttons like a normal phone.
they were called Pocket PCs right up until they started putting cell network chips in them.
Telescreen. Term coined in 1949 by Eric Blair.
It’s always on, always listening, always notifying you when you should do things. Algorithmically telling you what to hate, in two minute videos. Not having one is akin to exile from society. What was really a stroke of brilliance was making them portable and convincing us to pay for them, rather than making them mandatory and provided by the State.
Absolute genius, I could not have done it better! My telescreens are Xiaomi/Huawei – I would feel lonely if only the West was listening. They are quite wonderful little things.
It’s my Microsoft® Windows® PocketPC™ 2024 for Home™ PremiumPlus™ for Palm Computing™ Touch Edition (non-commercial) with Bing™ -powered device.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
