means a handheld mobile phone that runs apps, connects to the internet, and does far more than make calls — essentially a pocket-sized computer with a touchscreen.

from A transparent compound of "smart" + "phone." "Smart" here borrows the sense it gained in mid-20th-century tech jargon — "capable of independent or computer-driven action," as in "smart bomb" — built on the old English "smart," which originally meant sharp or stinging (think "a smart blow") before drifting toward "clever." "Phone" is clipped from "telephone," itself from Greek "tēle" (far) + "phōnē" (voice, sound). The word "smartphone" itself is a late-20th-century coinage that took off as devices began merging phone and computer; it became everyday vocabulary in the late 2000s.