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.

squirrel ,

PPC: Personal Pocket Computer

oxjox ,
@oxjox@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

FuckyWucky ,
@FuckyWucky@hexbear.net avatar

PDA

criitz ,

I like this one. Smartphones are what PDAs were supposed to be.

VonReposti ,

Computer phone. I mean, it is a combination of a computer and a mobile phone so why not?

Mr_Blott ,

TinyTellies ©®™

Fuck you that's mine

Mojo ,
@Mojo@lemmy.world avatar

This is the correct answer

mipadaitu ,

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.

jlow ,
@jlow@beehaw.org avatar

Handy (as we do in Germany).

neidu2 ,

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.

gravitywell ,

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...

jarredpickles87 ,
@jarredpickles87@lemmy.world avatar

Duuuude, mobidex has such a cool sound to it. Real star trek vibes. I wish.

Revan343 ,

"pocket dex"

Nintendo would sue so quickly

gravitywell ,

Depends on the timing but Pokedex is clearly itself derivative of rolodex so im not sure that would actually work in Nintendo's favor

ilinamorato ,

It's a Pokemon Index.

Revan343 ,

Pocket monster index

wesker ,
@wesker@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Bricks.

Nemo ,

pokécon - pocket computer

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit ,

Sinclair ZX Hand-Computer.

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.

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.

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.

DirigibleProtein ,

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

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