Stephen Sprunk wrote:
On 30-Mar-12 15:08, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Graham Nye wrote:
On 30/03/2012 18:40, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
Guy Gorton wrote:

What is a cell phone? Used in prisons?

Oh, good grief. You use the concept in your country.

You aren't aware that mobile phones use a cellular network?

I expect he is. Guy is pointing out that you are cross-
posting to two newsgroups where we call such devices
mobiles.

So if "cellular" is an international concept, is it acceptable to everyone
else for Guy to pretend to be obtuse?

"Cellular" is; "cell" isn't.

Yet, one of our friends from the UK tells us that "cell phone" is a term
that's sometimes used to distinguish the concept from "cordless phone",
as both types are mobile.

Either way, though, users don't care about technical details of radio
network organization; they care that their phone isn't tied to a fixed
location, i.e. it is "mobile".

In the United States, they are called cell phones and mobile phones.

Or wireless phones. Using country-specific terminology likely wouldn't
have drawn comment if you weren't cross-posting to newsgroups for other
countries where that term _isn't_ used.

I haven't used country-specific terminology, Stephen. You're wrong.

Some networks marketed the service with one term or the other. I believe
"cell" was the marketing term by some networks in early days

IIRC, they always used the full word, "cellular".

It's a cell phone because it works in a cell, Stephen. It's cellular
because it works on a cellular network. "They" didn't always use one
word or the other.

It was customers who shortened it from three syllables to one, which is
often the impetus for the development of American slang.

You know for a fact that no engineer who ever worked in deploying the
technology used "cell"; how nice for you.

Perhaps if those carriers had used the international term "mobile",
which is only two syllables and has no obvious shortening, the term
"cell" never would have appeared.

Oh, mobile is an international term for a technology developed in the
United States? Cute. Mobile was already in use for non-cellular telephony
as I pointed out already, Stephen. "Mobile" is the equivalent to
"wireless", and more generic than "cellular".

to distinguish the technology from pre-cellular mobile telephones that
were built into automobiles and communicated with base stations with
much longer ranges than transponders on cell towers.

Are you referring to "radio telephones"?

Did you ever see the television show Cannon? He used his constantly.

There were cellular car phones as well, back before handheld models were
available. One of my classmates (a drug dealer) had one.

My mother had a car phone in 1993, but she was a CPA, not a drug dealer.