Edit: To be clear, I was noting the simple fact that many probably don't at first think of an Android cellphone as a computer.
32-bit and 64-bit cellphones are made of synchronous VLSI ICs running at gigahertz clock speeds including a few gigabytes of byte-oriented DRAM and superscalar multi-core ARM CPUs with single-user GUIs displayed on an LCD running Linux and software written in C, Java, and JS, plus a GPU running OpenGL, storing their data on Flash, running on a few watts of power and globally networked over Wi-Fi and TCP/IP. They have peripherals connected over USB and the SD card bus, and also CSI.
This 64-bit laptop is made of synchronous VLSI ICs at gigahertz clock speeds including a few gigabytes of byte-oriented DRAM and a superscalar multi-core amd64 CPU with a single-user GUI displayed on an LCD running Linux and software written in C, Java, and JS, plus a GPU running OpenGL, storing its data on Flash and spinning rust, running on a few watts of power and globally networked over Wi-Fi and TCP/IP. It has peripherals connected over USB and the SD card bus, and also SATA.
These are pretty much exactly the same.
The definition of "computer" already has to be a lot broader than that to include both the 24-bit SDS 940 with 192 kibibytes of magnetic cores and 96 megabytes of spinning rust, running an instruction every 5 μs or so, with no GPU and analog video output hardware made out of vacuum tubes and TV cameras, on top of the Berkeley Timesharing System and serving six simultaneous users, on which Engelbart demonstrated The Mother of All Demos in 1968, and this laptop.
It is transparently absurd to suggest that "computer" should include both this laptop and the SDS 940 and its predecessors like the IBM 1401 (vacuum tubes, no transistors, decimal memory, punch card I/O, no operating system, no multitasking, variable-length instruction operands, millions of times slower and less memory), but not cellphones. Compared to the differences between the 1401 and my laptop, the differences between my laptop and the cellphone are totally insignificant.
It is true that the vulgar and ignorant often do not understand that their cellphones are computers. This allows them to be more easily taken advantage of by companies that want to reduce them to consumers instead of participants in creating culture. Instead of aping their errors, we should work to help them understand the true nature of things, because ignorance is not a sin—it's a punishment.
Because sunlight is the best disinfectant.
But you miss the fact that the new generation making movies and documentaries with these iPhones is creating culture! Leaving aside the distinction of computer/cellphone, the iPhone is just a very powerful tool to the new generation, and in some ways, they'd argue they can do more with it than with a mere 'computer'! And, in taking down the barriers of entry and making these computer cellphones easier to use to create new content, one could well argue culture has never before flourished as widely as it does today.
I don't want hand computers to go away. I just want them to be loyal to their owners, not to their manufacturers.
my iPhone runs Windows 3.0 (emulated in JavaScript even!) faster than I remember it being when I used it on a 386 in the early 1990s