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“Smartphone” is the wrong name

loup-vaillant.fr

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Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#21

Post by greggman »

chroma wrote: post #13

> For instance, picture Microsoft in 2001, after it got sued for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Imagine what would have happened if they sold Windows XP with an exclusive application store. Imagine that every program must be approved by Microsoft to run on XP, and they take a 30% cut. Oh, and no interpreter allowed. > They would have been sued into oblivion, lost half their customers, suffered one hell of a…

Microsoft was considered to have a monopoly (whether you or I agree). As such they were subject to different rules. Apple, especially when iPhone launched, did not have any kind of monopoly on cellphones nor did they have one on PDAs (which is really where smartphones come from, not cellphones).

As for people, people didn't sue Microsoft, companies did. People mostly didn't care. Companies like Sun and Netscape cared. They're they ones that lobbied to have the government declare MS a monopoly. In other words nothing to do with execution and perceived awesomeness by customers. At the time MS was sued IE was the best browser by pretty much every measure so customers wanted it. It was companies that were upset.

Also malware infested vs walled garden is a false dichotomy

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#22

Post by squilliam »

joakleaf wrote: post #9

"Smartphone" is the wrong name? What about "Feature phone"? Edit: Actually, I meant that the term "Feature phone" is really even a worse name for feature phones, than "Smartphone" is for smartphones. I didn't suggest that it was a better name, but the downvote and comments suggest that I didn't make that clear.

'feature phone' is already an industry term for (mainly) bottom-tier Android phones that lack the hardware to be considered among 'smart phones' but have the basic abilities to access the internet, and play basic media files. Basically the phones that come with the pay-as-you-go wal-mart phone plans.

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

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#23

Post by ccozan »

wodenokoto wrote: post #11

Japanese cellphones had a lot of the same use-cases that modern smartphones have. You could buy stuff online, use GPS, surf the mobile web, send pictures via email and purchase stuff and movies (disney even produced direct to featurephone cartoons in Japan!). This is usually used as an argument for why the Japanese decided to colloquially shorten 携帯電話 ("keitai denwa", hand-held telephone) into just 携帯(hand-held, or h…

Germans also call their smartphones "handy", even if the name comes from age of bricks/clamshells and having a color screen with 256 colours was a selling point.

Same idea, recently, the name "iphone" is quite popular and people distingish it between phones made by Apple and the rest.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#24

Post by collyw »

coldtea wrote: post #18
agumonkey wrote: post #5

Not even phones they're not handheld devices anymore. The lack of physical interface is very sad. Taking pictures, listening to music, even calling someone, all require high attention interaction over an unfit touchscreen. It's a small slate computer.

> Taking pictures, listening to music, even calling someone, all require high attention interaction over an unfit touchscreen. Are you kidding me? All of those functions are 10x easier to do on the "unfit touchscreen" that on what we had before that (tiny non-touch screens, LCDs, 80's style arrays of buttons, etc). And when it comes to actually taking the picture, changing track or volume etc, smartphones even offer…

Cd's usually only held about 10 -15 tracks, so it was hardly a problem getting lost in folders. Obscure functions on cameras are more likely to be obscure because of menu layouts rather than a touchscreen (its still difficult to find some obscure settings buried in menus whether you have a touchscreen or buttons).

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#25

Post by [deleted] »

squilliam wrote: post #22
joakleaf wrote: post #9

"Smartphone" is the wrong name? What about "Feature phone"? Edit: Actually, I meant that the term "Feature phone" is really even a worse name for feature phones, than "Smartphone" is for smartphones. I didn't suggest that it was a better name, but the downvote and comments suggest that I didn't make that clear.

'feature phone' is already an industry term for (mainly) bottom-tier Android phones that lack the hardware to be considered among 'smart phones' but have the basic abilities to access the internet, and play basic media files. Basically the phones that come with the pay-as-you-go wal-mart phone plans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_phone

[deleted]

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#26

Post by castell »

squilliam wrote: post #22
joakleaf wrote: post #9

"Smartphone" is the wrong name? What about "Feature phone"? Edit: Actually, I meant that the term "Feature phone" is really even a worse name for feature phones, than "Smartphone" is for smartphones. I didn't suggest that it was a better name, but the downvote and comments suggest that I didn't make that clear.

'feature phone' is already an industry term for (mainly) bottom-tier Android phones that lack the hardware to be considered among 'smart phones' but have the basic abilities to access the internet, and play basic media files. Basically the phones that come with the pay-as-you-go wal-mart phone plans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_phone

Nokia's Symbian based phones, various China based look-a-like phones and WinPhone 7 were called "feature phone".

You couldn't do much beyond the basic functionality. And there was a very limited amount of apps available, if any at all. They were as cheap as today's entry level Android smartphones.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#28

Post by Freak_NL »

wodenokoto wrote: post #11

Japanese cellphones had a lot of the same use-cases that modern smartphones have. You could buy stuff online, use GPS, surf the mobile web, send pictures via email and purchase stuff and movies (disney even produced direct to featurephone cartoons in Japan!). This is usually used as an argument for why the Japanese decided to colloquially shorten 携帯電話 ("keitai denwa", hand-held telephone) into just 携帯(hand-held, or h…

In that respect, I miss the word 携帯. スマホ (sumaho, ugh!) feels so uncultivated in such a pleasant language.

It was a predictable outcome though. Japanese has a tendency to abbreviate common words, and the term smartphone (the unwieldy スマートフォン/sumātofon) was imported with the first generations of smartphones.

The German Handy on the other hand (as ccozan mentions)… What a lovely word.

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