When the telephone was initially invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1849 the term ‘telephone’ which is made up of the two Greek words words ‘tele’ meaning ‘distance’ or ‘far’ and ‘phone’ meaning ‘sound’ made perfect sense because it described the function of the device precisely.
For the past 10 or so years however the telephone has been transformed into a multi-functional device that has more computing power than computers used to have about 20 years ago.
So the question is should we rename the device and if so, what should we call it? Or should we simply wait until the smartphone is replaced by the next device which probably will be something like Google Glasses? By the way, what is the phone or smartphone called in your native language? I assume that in the vast majority of all languages across the globe the word ‘telephone’ is very similar. For example, in German it’s just "Telefon’ and in Russian it’s телефон.