mobile phone

/ˈmoʊbəl foʊn/

/ˈmʌʊbaɪl fəʊn/

Other forms: mobile phones

The portable device you use to send texts and browse social media is your mobile phone. Over 80 percent of people around the world have a mobile phone!

The earliest mobile phones were cordless telephones, but these days many are more like pocket-sized computers. Though fewer people in poor countries have smartphones, most have access to basic mobile phones for communication on the go. Also known as cell phones, mobile phones were first imagined over 100 years ago. The original handheld prototype, invented in 1973, weighed more than four pounds. Mobile phone was coined in the early 1980s, as these phones became increasingly portable, or mobile.

Definitions of mobile phone

1. noun

   a hand-held mobile radiotelephone for use in an area divided into small sections, each with its own short-range transmitter/receiver
   synonyms: cell, cell phone, cellphone, cellular phone, cellular telephone

   type of:

   radiophone, radiotelephone, wireless telephone

   a telephone that communicates by radio waves rather than along cables