Are there smartphones in Freelancer/Discovery ?

[Lanakov]

Hello there. Quick and perhaps silly RP question, but : what do people use to communicate in this world ? We see transmissions all the time, ships have onboard radios that seem to cover a rather large range, the comms we send to each other go through entire systems with no bother (I'm assuming through Mass Effect-like relay beacons, for those who've read the novels)...
But how do people read/listen to them ? There are communication terminals in ships, sure, but do people have a handheld equivalent of today's phones ? To my knowledge, we never see anything like that during SP, and Freelancer does come across as somewhat low tech in certain aspects. Its release at the dawn of the 21st century probably helped... So there you go. I've been scratching my head during story writing because of this particular, and admittedly benign topic : smartphones have become ubiquitous in our world and it's hard to imagine a sci-fi setting without them... But FL is no ordinary sci fi setting, and it kinda feels off mentioning a character using a literal smartphone.

Discuss.

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