↪ 2014-07-04 Fri 15:53, Daniel Pocock daniel@pocock.com.au:
On 04/07/14 15:42, Hugo Roy wrote:
↪ 2014-07-04 Fri 14:40, Daniel Pocock daniel@pocock.com.au:
I don’t know how you feel about the term, but we can agree that it’s just a marketing invention. What’s wrong with you if you
Not quite - I think it serves to differentiate phones that can run apps from those that only act as firmware
In other words, a smartphone is a basic phone + a PDA/pocket computer
I think you’re missing the point of the discussion. I know what a smartphone refers to the object you describes, but that’s not what the term smartphone means in itself. Smartphone is a combination of “smart” and “phone” and there’s no denying that this combination is pure marketing. Another illustration of this is how new objects are being sold with “smart” in front of it: Smart Tv, Smar fridge, smart fork and whatnot.
Ok, so "smart" is convenient marketing but if we want to refer to such a phone, as distinct from a legacy mobile, just using the word "mobile" may not be sufficient
Is there any other terms that could be used?
Depending on the context, you might not need to differentiate 2010s phones from 2000s phones (that’s true most of the time). I don’t use a special word to make a distinction between a laptop from 2014 and a laptop from 1992.
However, in the past we would talk about “mobile phones” or “phones” -- which does not make much sense any more because these objects have improved to a point that their primary use might not be to make phone calls any more. Which is why sticking to “*phones” is not accurate.
Mobile devices is, I think, clear enough. Or mobile computing devices.
If however you need to specifically make a differentiation between phones from 2000s and phones from 2010s, well, let’s get creative -- but I don’t think we need to call them “smartphones.”