• zikzak025@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          Maybe a bit redundant these days. They’re effectively just “phones”.

          Used to be that the label was needed to differentiate from earlier feature phones, but even the “dumb phones” of today primarily run some slimmed down flavor of Android. No one can escape the data harvest.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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            11 hours ago

            Remember the term “PDA” “Personal Digital Assistant?” From like the PalmOS days?

            At this point a smart phone is a PDA that ate a cell phone to gain its power. I never hear the term PDA in the real world anymore, but video games use it for in-universe gadgets often used to justify the inventory menu or whatever. Subnautica does it.

    • kn33@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Because phablet became mainstream so it doesn’t make sense to have a different word for them anymore.