The most common term here is &quot;portable&quot;, or &quot;téléphone portable&quot;, or just &quot;téléphone&quot;.  &quot;Portable&quot; means what you think it means: you can carry it.  Sometimes, (especially in the commercials), we see &quot;mobile&quot; instead of &quot;portable&quot;.  It also means what you think it means: you can move it.<p>I think one reason behind the word &quot;mobile&quot; is because &quot;ordinateur portable&quot; (or &quot;portable&quot; for short) is already used to talk about laptops.  Destkops are in rare cases called &quot;ordinateur de bureau&quot;.  Generally, we just say &quot;PC&quot; —unless it&#x27;s from Apple.<p>I am not aware of what the Académie Française may or may not have decided.<p>What I love about the English language here, is that we have 3 words that neatly apply to the three form factors: desktop, laptop, and palmtop.  It&#x27;s a bit of a bummer we can&#x27;t exploit such regularity in French.  If I had to settle on a term, I&#x27;d probably try &quot;ordinateur mobile&quot;, or &quot;mobile&quot; for short.  Unlike &quot;palmtop&quot;, it wouldn&#x27;t scream &quot;computer&quot;, so the best I can hope for is that we just stop using &quot;téléphone&quot; to describe those things.