[Ads-l] New retronyms: analogue phone and analogue handset

Hugo hugovk at GMAIL.COM
Tue Feb 2 20:09:24 UTC 2016


A couple of terms that cropped up in January: analogue phone and
analogue handset, retronyms for a non-smart digital phone, a
dumbphone, a feature phone.

The type of phone is still definitely a digital phone, with computer
chips and CPUs, using the same digital networks as smartphones,
although cheaper and with fewer functions.

The Independent, 12 January 2016:
---
The actor Eddie Redmayne ditched his smartphone in favour of an
analogue handset to help him live “in the moment”, he has revealed.

...

For a while. Redmayne says his experiment worked. “I love the idea of
a more analogue phone in theory,” said the actor. “During the day, I
felt far more alive.
---
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/eddie-redmayne-says-he-ditched-his-smartphone-to-live-in-the-moment-a6806451.html

The Guardian, 17 January 2016:
---
In an instant, I processed my shock into potential content provision,
opining internally that Eddie Redmayne’s analogue handset represented,
to me, almost the last link to a better time: a time before the stress
of instant communication, the death of casual contemplation and the
inevitable dumbing-down caused by an oceanic volume of immediate
information: train times, species of woodlouse, the original line-up
of BMX Bandits.
---
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/why-i-mourn-eddie-redmayne-old-phone-stewart-lee

Hugo

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