How does "cell phone" explain anything useful about that particular type of phone? Using the word "cell" for a specific geographic area covered by a particular radio tower is itself a rather vague and general analogy. You could use "cell" for any element of a larger structure or organism I guess, but it wouldn't explain anything specific.
"Mobile phone" could have made sense to someone even before the introduction of mobile phones. But I think the word "cell phone" only took on meaning after the introduction of the device itself.
The cell(ular) in cellphone refers to the handoff between cell towers as you move around.
In comparison Radio tends to have a single tower that sends radio waves and does not care about who is listing. The advantage for cellphones is you can reuse the bandwidth from the same small set of frequencies across the country AND maintain a phonecall durring a handoff (where raido keeps forcing you to change stations on a long trip). The issue is the phone's need to rebroadcast their position constantly which eats’ battery life. It's even worse when they fail to connect to a tower as they just keep trying until the battery fails.
Granted, an end user might care, but MMX or SSE mean little to most Intel customers. 'with techron', 'dual turbo', 'LED TV's', 'tessellation', 'electrolytes'
I wasn't referring to "cell", I was referring to "phone". Just like with "vacuum" and "cleaner". You don't need to be an engineer to understand that the first one is used to make phone calls, and the second one to clean.
"Mobile phone" could have made sense to someone even before the introduction of mobile phones. But I think the word "cell phone" only took on meaning after the introduction of the device itself.