GSM

(mobile telephony) Initialism of Global System for Mobile communications.


NSA

(mobile telephony) Initialism of non-standalone architecture.


data

→ Turkish: data

dater (non-rhotic, except some South Asian accents)

Borrowed from Latin data, nominative plural of datum (“that is given”), neuter past participle of dō (“I give”). Doublet of date.

run out of data

(mobile telephony) Ellipsis of mobile data (“digital information transmitted using the cellular telephone network rather than Wi-Fi”).


unlock

en-verb

unlock (third-person singular simple present unlocks, present participle unlocking, simple past and past participle unlocked)

unlocks (present singular third-person)
unlocking (participle present)
unlocked (participle past)
unlocked (past)

From Middle English unloken, unlouken, onlouken, from Old English onlūcan (“to unlock”), equivalent to un- + lock. Cognate with Dutch ontluiken (“to unlock”).

(transitive, mobile telephony) To configure (a mobile phone) so that it is not bound to any particular carrier.


Android

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Android.wav

(computing, mobile telephony) A mobile operating system currently developed by Google.


Android

Both Androids and iPhones have a timer that can delay taking a photo by up to 10 seconds.

2016, Technology Made Easy: Simple Ways to Use Your Computer, Phone, and Other Electronic Devices, Peachtree City, Ga.: FC&A Publishing, →ISBN, page 317:

(computing, mobile telephony) A mobile phone running on Android OS.


WP

(mobile telephony) Initialism of Windows Phone.


UC

en-noun

UC (countable and uncountable, plural UCs)

(mobile telephony) Initialism of ultra capacity.


app

A visual tool can be thought of as a graphics app that generates most of your program's GUI code for you

1999 February, Maximum PC, volume 4, number 2:

So is a spreadsheet app, but I'm not going to put those on a web site any time soon.

1999, Jerry Bradenbaugh, JavaScript application cookbook, page xi:

The Web browser was the killer app that kickstarted the Internet and, in turn, enabled it to be embedded in everything

1999 November, AUUGN, volume 20, number 4, page 9:

Want realtime flight and gate updates? A calorie counter? A remote for your DVD player? Chances are there's an app for it. Smartphones separate themselves in another key area: connectivity

2005 May, Popular Science, volume 266, number 5, page 78:

(computing, mobile telephony) An application (program), especially a small one designed for a mobile device.


locked

(mobile telephony, of a phone) Bound to a carrier.


unlocked

an unlocked iPhone

(mobile telephony, of a phone) Not bound to any particular carrier.


GPRS

General Packet Radio Service
General Packet Radio Service#English

(mobile telephony) Initialism of General Packet Radio Service.


UMTS

w:Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

(mobile telephony) Initialism of Universal Mobile Telecommunications System.


smartphone

From smart + phone, first usage in the mid-1990s.

(mobile telephony) A mobile phone with more advanced features and greater computing capacity than a featurephone.


(mobile telephony) Abbreviation of 3rd generation, a cellular phone communication standard.


(mobile telephony, retronym) Referring to standards before 2.5G. Includes GSM, DMA, TDMA, iDEN, and PDC.


CNA

(mobile telephony) Initialism of cloud native architecture.


selfie

→ Arabic: سِلْفِي (silfī)

→ Gulf Arabic: سلفي (silfi, salfi)

→ Armenian: սելֆի (selfi)

→ Assamese: চেল্ফি (selphi)

→ Azerbaijani: selfi

→ Belarusian: сэ́лфі (sélfi)

→ Czech: selfíčko

→ Danish: selfie

→ Dutch: selfie

→ Finnish: selfie

→ French: selfie

→ Georgian: სელფი (selpi)

→ German: Selfie

→ Greek: σέλφι (sélfi)

→ Hebrew: סֶלְפִי (sélfi)

→ Hungarian: szelfi, selfie

→ Irish: féinín (calque)

→ Italian: selfie

→ Japanese: セルフィー (serufi)

→ Hebrew: סֶלְפִי (sélfi)

→ Korean: 셀피 (selpi)

→ Latvian: selfijs

→ Lithuanian: selfis

→ Norwegian Bokmål: selfie

→ Norwegian Nynorsk: selfie

→ Norwegian Nynorsk: sjølvi (calque)

→ Papiamentu: selfie

→ Persian: سلفی (selfi)

→ Polish: selfie

→ Portuguese: selfie, sélfie

→ Romanian: selfie

→ Russian: се́лфи (sɛ́lfi)

→ Scottish Gaelic: fèineag (calque)

→ Serbo-Croatian: selfie

→ Slovak: selfie

→ Slovak: svojka (calque)

→ Spanish: selfie, selfi

→ Swedish: selfie

→ Thai: เซลฟี (seel-fîi)

→ Turkish: selfie, özçekim

→ Ukrainian: се́лфі (sélfi)

From self + -ie. Attested since 2002, originally Australian English.

Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.

2002 September 13, N. "Hopey" Hope, "re: Dissolvable stitches" https://web.archive.org/web/20131123194231/http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/archives/archive32/newposts/169/topic169861.shtm, ABC Online Forum selfie photo

Pre. Nice rooftop selfie. […] No Hair. Another nice rooftop selfie.

2004 October 21, Brian McGuirk, "bmcguirk's photos." https://web.archive.org/web/20041126014124/http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcguirk/, Flickr

That's not to imply that it's "wrong" for your arm or hand to show up in a selfie.

2005, Jim Krause, Photo Idea Index, HOW Books, published 2005, →ISBN, page 148:

2012 December 27, Andrew Prince, “The Mars Rover Takes A Selfie” http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/12/27/168139129/the-mars-rover-takes-a-selfie, the picture show, National Public Radio

Barack Obama was talking to David Cameron and with the Danish Prime Minister, and that’s when she actually reached into her purse and brought out a cell phone and stretched her arms and did a selfie with them.

2013 December 13, Roberto Schmidt (guest), Brooke Gladstone (interviewer and editor), “The Photographer Behind ‘Selfie-Gate’”, On the Media, National Public Radio

I shall take this photograph myself. This must be what they call a selfie.

2017, Lord Stag, “Say Cheese”, in Lily's Driftwood Bay:

take a selfie

(informal, mobile telephony) A photographic self-portrait, especially one taken manually (not using a timer, tripod etc.) with a small camera or mobile phone.


selfie

en-verb

selfie (third-person singular simple present selfies, present participle selfying, simple past and past participle selfied)

selfies (present singular third-person)
selfying (participle present)
selfied (participle past)
selfied (past)

(intransitive, informal, mobile telephony) To take a selfie.


dual SIM

dual + SIM (i.e. Subscriber Identity Module)

(mobile telephony) holding two SIM cards


triple SIM

triple + SIM (i.e. Subscriber Identity Module)

(mobile telephony) holding three SIM cards


long term evolution

(telephony, mobile telephony) A standard marketed as 4G LTE for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals.


4G LTE

(telephony, mobile telephony) Synonym of LTE (Long Term Evolution)


selfie stick

For example, photography shop Artworkfoto in Funan DigitaLife Mall sells about five selfie sticks every day.

2014 March 30, Benson Ang, “Selfie sticks are hot”, in The Sunday Times, Singapore, page L4:

We snapped another selfie (one of the guys, Royston out of our newly acquired Singapore Zopim office, introduced the Exchange to the selfie stick, and that photo is now legendary.)

2014, Mikkel Svane, Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business, John Wiley & Sons (2014), pages 176-177, published 8 December

The needs of selfie takers feed into new product development such as a selfie stick that allows the ul-jang angle, a mirrorless DSLR camera with a 180-degree tilting LCD window, a motion-detecting shutter, and a camera with wireless internet for transferring images.

2015 January, Yoo Jin Kwon, Kyoung-Nan Kwon, “Consuming the Objectified Self: The Quest for Authentic Self”, in Asian Social Science, page 310:

(mobile telephony) An extendable monopod arm onto which a smartphone or camera can be mounted in order to take wide-angle photographs of oneself.


(mobile telephony) Abbreviation of 4th generation, a cellular phone communication standard.


iOS

From i- + OS. Many Apple products have an i- prefix in their names.

Not all of my vibecoding experiments have been successful. I've been struggling for weeks to build an "inbox autopilot" tool capable of responding to my emails automatically, in my writing style. I've encountered roadblocks when trying to integrate A.I. work flows into apps like Google Photos and iOS Voice Memos, which aren't designed to play well with third-party add-ons.

2025 February 27, “Not a Coder? With A.I., Just Having an Idea Can Be Enough.”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2025-03-14:

(computing, mobile telephony) A mobile operating system (OS) created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware.


hamburger menu

graphical user interface
graphical user interface

(graphical user interface, mobile telephony) A dropdown menu whose presence is indicated by a hamburger icon (i.e. the triple bar ≡).


hamburger icon

The three lines suggest a stylised hamburger, i.e. a layer of meat between two layers of bread.

(graphical user interface, mobile telephony) A symbol consisting of three parallel horizontal lines (i.e. the triple bar ≡), used to indicate a dropdown menu.


hamburger button

en-noun

hamburger button (plural hamburger buttons)

(graphical user interface, mobile telephony) A button displaying the hamburger icon (three parallel horizontal lines: ≡), used to activate a dropdown menu.


(mobile telephony) Abbreviation of 5th generation, a mobile network communication standard.


EDGE

Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution
w:Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution

(mobile telephony) Acronym of Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution.


(mobile telephony, retronym) Referring to standards before 2.75G.


FUP

(mobile telephony) Initialism of fair usage policy.


iPadOS

Apple is rolling out the public beta of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 on Thursday. We have a full (and lengthy) preview guide on both operating systems here, and now we’re breaking down how to get the public beta on your iPhone or iPad.

2020 July 9, Jacob Krol, “Here’s how to get the iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 public beta”, in CNN:

(computing, mobile telephony) A mobile operating system (OS) created and developed by Apple Inc. used for its tablets.


Symbian

(computing, mobile telephony) A discontinued mobile operating system originally developed by the Symbian Ltd. consortium and later by Symbian Foundation, Nokia and Accenture.


mobile data

Yet O2 says that while it has doubled the number of iPhone users, mobile data use is doubling every 4 months, equivalent to an eightfold growth every year.

2010 June 11, Charles Arthur, “Why file-sharing has killed 'unlimited' mobile data contracts”, in The Guardian:

The analysis of mobile data plans in 230 countries revealed that the UK ranked a “disappointing” 136th when the cost of one gigabyte (1GB) of mobile data was looked at.

2019 March 5, Rupert Jones, “UK among countries with priciest mobile data plans in Europe”, in The Guardian:

By turning off mobile data, you end up with a dumb or minimalist phone while out and about, but a fully internet-connected smartphone while at home, at work and in coffee shops and restaurants that provide Wi-Fi.

2019 March 23, Mike Elgan, “Why you should stop using mobile data”, in Computerworld:

(mobile telephony) Internet data transfer over a cellular telephone network rather than Wi-Fi.


camera roll

Named after the traditional roll of film.

(computing, mobile telephony) The collection of images and videos taken on a smartphone.


Voice over NR

Short for Voice over New Radio, from 5G New Radio, fifth-generation radio access technology. Compare VoIP, from Voice over Internet Protocol.

Though voice services will be made available initially via Voice over LTE (VoLTE) service on 4G network, eventually voice services in 5G, referred to as Voice over NR (VoNR), is expected to be next revenue stream for the operator.

2019, Kashmira Kapoor, Dandra Prasad Basavaraj, Shrinath Ramamoorthy, Tushar Vrind, “Novel method for increased power conservation in voice over nr (vonr) devices”, in EAI Endorsed Transactions on Cloud Systems, volume 5, page e7:

Voice over NR is voice over IP incorporating the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) infrastructure previously introduced in LTE.

2021 July 14, “Why voice over 5G relies heavily on LTE”, in 5G Technology World:

Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and Voice over NR (VoNR), are two similar technologies that have been widely deployed by operators to provide a better calling experience in LTE and 5G networks, respectively.

2023 January 6, Zishuai Cheng, Mihai Ordean, Flavio D. Garcia, Baojiang Cui, Dominik Rys, “Watching your call: Breaking VoLTE Privacy in LTE/5G Networks”, in arXiv:

(Internet, mobile telephony) A 5G high-speed wireless communication standard for mobile phones and data terminals, including Internet of things (IoT) devices and wearables.


talk time

talk time (countable and uncountable, plural talk times)

talk times (plural)
talktime (alternative)

(mobile telephony) The length of time a person can speak on a mobile phone before having to recharge the battery.

(mobile telephony) A prepaid amount of time on the bill agreement of a mobile phone.


push notification

push notification (plural push notifications)

(Internet, mobile telephony) The delivery of information from a software application to a computing device without a specific request from the client.


on silent

(electronics, mobile telephony) A setting on an electronic device that prevents it from producing noise when it receives a call or a message, such as an alert or a notification.


(mobile telephony, retronym) Referring to standards before 3G.