Why Are Mobile Phones Called Cell Phones?

Daniel Ganninger
Knowledge Stew
Published in
4 min readJan 10, 2021

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The smartphone you carry with you every day has been commonly referred to as a mobile phone, a cell phone, or a cellular phone. While the term “mobile phone” makes sense, why then was a phone ever called a “cellular phone”? To answer that question, we need to first go back to how things got started.

How It All Began

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Daniel Ganninger
Knowledge Stew

The writer, editor, and chief lackey of Knowledge Stew and the Knowledge Stew line of trivia books. Connect at knowledgestew.com and danielganninger.com