If the order of events were different, what might we be calling smartphones?

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.

pelletbucket ,
@pelletbucket@lemm.ee avatar

they were called Pocket PCs right up until they started putting cell network chips in them.

VinesNFluff ,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

Honestly, probably "palmtop"

There WERE palmtop computers, and the first few smartphone-like devices trace their lineage TO palmtops integrating cell phone functionality.

And it pairs nicely with laptop.

aluminium ,

Pocket PC

zeusbottom ,

Pocket Ad Machine

Sellfone

Social Distorter

Dynamic Uniform Radio Receiver (DURR)

RIPandTERROR ,
@RIPandTERROR@sh.itjust.works avatar

Here to point out Personal Electronic Terminal was very much on the table at one point

intensely_human ,

Terminals

NigelFrobisher ,

And here I was wondering why podcasts are still called podcasts when they barely had anything to do with iPods in the first place.

Ross_audio ,

iPods had an 82% share of the US market at the time the term was first used.

https://www.theregister.com/2004/10/12/ipod_us_share/

At the time a "broadcast" to you iPod made the name podcast pretty understandable.

And there's not much else I could think of to call it given technology at the time.

MP3 player was the generic term. But MP3 cast feels clunky.

I did hear audioblog used. But they weren't all blogs.

It really comes down to the fact that at the time everyone knew "pod" meant "iPod" and that's it.

Saigonauticon ,

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.

weeeeum ,

PITA from the article "Is that a PITA in your pocket?". It was written in 1999 and was a literally perfect prediction of what smartphones would be. Even down to PITA being an acronym for both "Personal Information Telecommunication Agent" and "Pain in the Ass" since the overwhelming connectivity would destroy our privacy.

You could legitimately make a conspiracy theory from how accurate his prediction and article was.

rmuk ,

It's my Microsoft® Windows® PocketPC™ 2024 for Home™ PremiumPlus™ for Palm Computing™ Touch Edition (non-commercial) with Bing™ -powered device.

mindbleach ,

Microsoft redesigns the iPod.

reverendsteveii ,

I feel like palmtop, as derived from desktop and laptop, has a shot here

howrar ,

We did have palm pilot for a brief period in time.

Saigonauticon ,

We had some computers called palmtops for a while! They were sort of like early tablets that ran Windows and had keyboards. Some were pretty cool, and they definitely played a similar role to smartphones for a bit. Although they were overly expensive. Here is one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO

These are making a (little) bit of a comeback. I find myself sometimes wanting a portable terminal for emergency maintenance, although it's more practical to just throw a Bluetooth keyboard for my phone in my backpack.

mindbleach ,

Office Depot's tiny-laptop aisle was like pornography, whenever I was dragged through there as a child in the late 90s. A computer of your own? The size of a Game Boy? Running actual* Windows?! And it's only $3000! Forget the colored binders, mom, lemme snag one of these!

Saigonauticon ,

Haha yeah... I couldn't afford them either. Also the weird fancy Sony-VAIO things only in Japan.

I did eventually get a Panasonic CF-M34 though. It was a netbook before netbooks were a thing -- and you could use it to hammer in a nail, then boil it it in a pot of water to clean it. Without turning it off. Then set it gently on a table, and blow the table up with dynamite -- although this apparently caused a restart (someone tried it). That thing was awesome. You still spot it in movies sometimes.

mindbleach ,

Ohhh, the Toughbooks. Yeah those things were ridiculous. I just bought a Libretto, years later, and have had the most aggravating time trying to get any data on or off of it, thanks to the gulf in interfaces.

Saigonauticon ,

The librettos were cute little machines though!

Also there were those TransMeta Crusoe processors that came after them. Those were way before their time and didn't take off. Went bankrupt. Now we do that with Intel Atom, or RISC.

DirigibleProtein ,

Screenphones, because they only have a screen and no buttons like a normal phone.

LucasWaffyWaf , (edited )

Definitely PDA. Before we had modern smartphones folks would carry a cell phone and separate PDA which had computer functionalities. I've always said they were smartphones with half the smart and none of the phone.

Common apps included calculators, calendars, to do lists, notepads, clocks with alarms, task lists with reminders, PDF readers, word processors, later ones could even double as mp3 players and portable video players. There were even games made for them, both official and homebrew. My Windows PDAs have a bootleg port of XCOM: UFO Defense on them, which works brilliantly! There's also ports of Space Trader, if you want to take Elite with ya in your pocket.

PDAs evolved into smartphones as companies started including cellular tech inside PalmOS and Windows Mobile PDAs with devices like the Palm Treo and HTC Apache running PDA OSes with cellular connectivity. Once the iPhone came out though basically everything changed. They weren't the first, but they released a slick, buttery smooth device using a much better type of touch screen, with heaps of built in flash memory, a vibrant high res screen, and of course, iTunes. I own a PDA from the same year, not lower end but kinda middle of the road. 128 mb of usable flash memory, 64 mbs of RAM, a 240x320 resolution 16 bit color resistive touch screen (pressure sensitive, like the DS), a full sized SD card slot which can take up to 2 gigs of additional storage, wifi, Bluetooth, and IRDa. Required a stylus for usage. Versus the iPhone, which had anywhere from 4 gigs to 16 gigs of built in storage, 128 mb of RAM, a 480x320 resolution 18 bit color capacitive touch screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and multi-touch functionality on the screen. No stylus needed, either.

Raiderkev ,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_PC

My aunt had one of these when I was a kid. I remember thinking that it was going to be the future.

MeetInPotatoes ,

If you say it really fast, it sounds like fleshlight.

Zanshi ,

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

flashgnash ,

I think the main issue is too many syllables

Maybe smartman but that sounds kinda weird

ilinamorato ,

Yeah, it was genericized very quickly.

Kissaki ,
  • Touchphone
  • Voicetransmitter
  • Walky-Talky
  • Mini-PC

The alternatives are endless

Fun fact: In Germany, mobile phones are called "Handy"

whatsgoingdom ,

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.

PlexSheep ,

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.

Kissaki ,

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.

PlexSheep ,

Yeah, flat is colloquial speech for Phone Flatrate. Flats being the plural.

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