I have great fun explaining what a PDA is to my students.
'so it's a phone?'
'no because it isn't. Also because it does not have internet connectivity'
'so it's basically a brick? A smart brick?'
'so it's a phone?'
'no because it isn't. Also because it does not have internet connectivity'
'so it's basically a brick? A smart brick?'
He said something like: "Back when there were no computers [...]."
A student raised his hand, and asked:
"But if there were no computers... How did people access the internet?"
https://www.gravediggerslocal.com/2008/10/the-little-monster...
AFAIK there even were late models which could make calls and browse the web.
Smartphones were called "communicators", modem-less models (like what today iPod is to iPhone) were called PDAs.
They didn't trademark the term, so once the iPhone and Androids came out it was applied to them as well.
There are quite a few industry terms like this. "PDA" was coined by Apple to describe the Newton in generic terms. The term "game console" was promoted by Nintendo in the early 90s to prevent clueless parents from calling rival systems "Nintendos"; before that we called them systems or just referred to them by brand name.
Too bad that didn't quite work.
(the SIM card part would be because it is something the students could do with their own phones -and some might have done at some point- so they'd have first hand experience)