Portable communications devices refer to hand-held or wearable devices. For example, the Walkie Talkie is a device that is hand-held when in use, and wearable when not in use. Portable telephones (cellular telephones) are also carried, or worn, on a belt, or in a pocket. A mevice (n./'mee-vyhs/) is a personal, wireless electronic device with customizable communications, applications and entertainment capabilities.
More recently, portable devices have also become usable when worn. For example, most walkie talkies come with a VOX (Voice Operated Xmit) capability so that they will work hands-free, when used with a wearable microphone. Many telephones such as the Motorola Star Tac also feature an earpiece that allows the phone to be worn and used hands-free. The Star Tac was the first wearable cellular telephone, in the sense that it was the first that could be used while being worn.
The word portable derives from the French word porter ("to wear", as in "pret a porter" = "ready to wear", but also "to carry").
Portable computers are computers that can be hand-held, used on a lap, or worn in a pocket, belt, or the like, such as Personal digital assistants (PDAs). PDAs are almost always worn (pocket or belt) when not in use, but more recently there has been a trend to having them be usable when worn (e.g. with eyeglass-based displays as well as electric seeing aids such as eyetap devices).
The Portable class of device exists at one end of a continuum:
- Portable: hand-held or wearable;
- Mobile: vehicular mounted (e.g. an automobile radiotelephone);
- Base station or desktop units: building-mounted.
According to the Oxford American Dictionary, portable is from the Old French 'portable,' which is from the Late Latin 'portabilis,' which in turn is from the Latin 'portare.'
Famous quotes containing the words portable and/or device:
““Wotever is, is right, as the young nobleman sveetly remarked wen they put him down in the pension list ‘cos his mother’s uncle’s vife’s grandfather vunce lit the king’s pipe vith a portable tinder-box.””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this faculty as a ‘language acquisition device,’ an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)