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.

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...

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.

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

TinyTellies ©®™

Fuck you that's mine

Handy (as we do in Germany).

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.

PPC: Personal Pocket Computer

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.

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.

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

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

Sinclair ZX Hand-Computer.

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

pokécon - pocket computer

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

Terminals

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

The alternatives are endless

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

Pocket Ad Machine

Sellfone

Social Distorter

Dynamic Uniform Radio Receiver (DURR)

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

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

Pocket PC

Bricks.

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.

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