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Different words for mobile phone


Christa

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15 minutes ago, Christa said:

D'you think anyone would actually recognise that these days?

Any Taiwanese, I'd think. I don't think I've heard it in the wild much, but it's certainly recognised.

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On 1/4/2018 at 9:02 PM, Christa said:

手機 is the standard term for normal, everyday conversation, isn't it?

 

Yes, I think so. 

 

I hear 功能手机 and 老人手机 to tell the two kinds apart: "smartphone" vs. "dumb phone," usually with big numbers. 

 

And of course there is 二手手机 said quickly as you walk by the phone shops by the people sitting on stools out front. Pretty sure I've sometimes seen it abbreviated as "二手机“ on the handwritten signs these folks sometimes show to passersby 行人。 

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1 hour ago, abcdefg said:

I hear 功能手机 and 老人手机 to tell the two kinds apart: "smartphone" vs. "dumb phone,"

功能手机 is not what you think it is. It's a literal translation of the English 'feature phone' which despite the name means a phone without most of the features of a smart phone. It's only a short step above a dumb phone in terms of features. 

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An iPhone7 is definitely a 智能手机 I don't know anything about xiaomi5 but if it's android it's almost certainly a smartphone too. 

 

Feature phones can connect to the Internet, but maybe in a limited way compared to a smart phone (e.g. Maybe it gets weather or other data streams but doesn't have a fully featured browser). 

 

The wikipedia entry on feature phones has a good overview of their capabilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_phone

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when you browse for them on JingDong, TMall they just come up as 手机 and sorting from cheapest to most expensive it's just referred to 2G for the cheapest.

I assume in time the use of the word "smart phone" (chinese and english) will disappear entirely from common use. I don't see that classification in the shops in the UK either now.

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20 hours ago, imron said:

Feature phones can connect to the Internet, but maybe in a limited way compared to a smart phone (e.g. Maybe it gets weather or other data streams but doesn't have a fully featured browser). 

 

Thanks. I read the Wikipedia article. Turns out I didn't know these phones existed and had at best a very fuzzy idea of their niche in the spectrum of available mobile phones on the market today. 

 

My Xiaomi 5 is a very capable, full-featured smart phone; in fact, it is much smarter than its owner, namely the guy who is writing this post. 

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