Worst cell phone names of all time (pictures)

Seriously, what were they thinking?

Cell phone makers have come up with some wacky names for their wares over the years. For every stroke of genius (Motorola's original Razr flip phone rises to the top) there's been a fit of nomenclature flops. And so begins this roundup of worst phone names ever. (Note: This list is completely subjective. Feel free to chime in with your favorite dud muffins.)

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    Yezz Billy 4.7

    As if the name of this Miami-based phone-maker weren't pun-inducing enough, the Yezz Billy 4.7 closes the loop with the Billy series, a line of Windows phones named after -- yep, you guessed it -- Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Big sigh.

    
    
    

    

    
    

    HTC One M8 Harman Kardon

    It's bad enough that the HTC One M8 Harman Kardon is an awkward, semi-rhyming mouthful you can barely spit out five times fast. Even more unfortunate? That this gorgeous audio-boosted flagship perfectly sets up a certain spoonerism any company would be smart to sidestep.

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    ZTE Iconic Phablet

    It takes a certain kind of chutzpah to confidently and unironically name your ultralarge smartphone the ZTE Iconic Phablet -- particularly if it is anything other than the obvious and undisputed top of its class. That certainly isn't the case for this ho-hum midrange effort.
    This marks the first time that any smartphone vendor has embraced the often-reviled portmanteau "phablet" in any official capacity. Luckily, US prepaid carrier Boost Mobile had the good sense to rename its version as the Boost Max
    
    

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      Panasonic Eluga

      2012's Panasonic Eluga was a pretty, middle-of-the-road Android handset sold overseas. But a clunky, meaningless name (what is an "eluga," anyway? And is that a hard "g" as in "beluga," or a soft one, "eluja"?) was almost as awkward as its inconvenient button placement.
      

      • HTC Windows Phone 8X

        Talk about marking your territory. HTC essentially flipped Nokia the bird by dropping the name of Microsoft's operating system into the Windows Phone 8X. It would be like naming a handset the "Samsung Galaxy Android phone." HTC's bold-but-brief surge to displace Nokia as Microsoft's OS darling has proven ultimately ineffective, even more so in light of Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's hardware-making arm

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          HP Pre 3

          Its terribly rhyming tongue-twister of a name certainly isn't the reason why the HP Pre 3 never made it to the US. Instead, abysmal sales and mismanagement killed WebOS' chances in the mobile platform fight, ending the once-promising Pre line shortly after HP's disastrous purchase of Palm.

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            Samsung Galaxy S 2, Epic 4G Touch

            Officially the Samsung Galaxy S 2, Epic 4G Touch, Sprint's Galaxy S 2 variant claimed the dubious honor of having the most long-winded name in cell phone history. By the time it came out on shelves, Sprint had lopped off a few words, making it the much more manageable Samsung Epic 4G Touch. If only T-Mobile had followed suit with its Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G, we'd all have been a little happier.
            
             

          
          

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            HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa

            I'm not sure what would compel a smartphone company to name devices after popular Latin dances. Apparently, AT&T wasn't, either. The ChaCha, which was first introduced at Mobile World Congress in February 2011, blessedly became the HTC Status when it landed with the US carrier. Unfortunately, the device itself made a few ungraceful moves.
            
            

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              LG Optimus Vu

              There's nothing wrong with calling a large-screen phone the LG Optimus Vu (or Vu 2), just so long as your audience mentally and instinctively pronounces it "view" instead of "voo." Verizon scuttled all linguistic ambiguity by titling its version the harmless, but vague, LG Intuition.
              
              

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                Casio G'zOne...anything

                No, no, Casio. It's bad enough you have to use an apostrophe and en vogue capitalization in the name of this rugged phone line, but did you have to make it utterly (and awkwardly) unpronouncable as well? Case in point: the Casio G'zOne Commando 4G LTE. That's "jeez-WUN," if you were wondering.
                

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              Samsung :)

              How do you pronounce an emoticon? The Samsung :) has been haunting us since the texting phone materialized in 2010 with its over-the-top cutesy alias. Vocalizing the symbol's real-world English counterpart, Smiley, isn't so hot, either.

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                Samsung Messager

                Continuing a particularly disastrous stretch of Samsung product names, the Messager sent ripples of nails-on-a-chalkboard cringing through the entire CNET newsroom when it landed at MetroPCS in 2009. Messenger. E-N. Big difference.

               

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                Cricket MSGM8 and TXTM8

                Texting symbology was clearly having a moment when the text-heavy MSGM8 and TXTM8 leaped onto the scene -- a moment we can all be thankful has passed.
                
                

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                  LG Optimus Black

                  The flipside of being overly creative is not being imaginative enough. Such is the case with the blandly named LG Optimus Black. It might have been one thing if the phone were called something like the LG Optimus Neon, but how desperate do you have to be to shout out the most common phone color there is?
                  In the US at least, Sprint and its prepaid subsidiary Boost Mobile got it as the much more exciting-sounding LG Marquee. Whew.
                  
                  

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                    HTC One

                    HTC One what? I have no problem with this exceptionally well-tailored Android phone (which also comes in Smurf-tastic blue). Instead, it's the timing that stinks. Since it follows the similarly named HTC One X, One X+, One XL, One V, One VX, and One S series, "One" here sounds like the first half of a subbrand in need of a caboose. It doesn't help that the One Mini is yet another (scaled-back) model
                    
                    

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                      LG Chocolate

                      I get it. This phone has a candy bar shape and smooth, liquid music qualities, hence the name. Yet anyone who could possibly consider naming a cell phone after a chocolate bar has no reverence for the good stuff. It may have been years since LG's multimodel Chocolate series enraged true lovers of confectionery goodness, but the blaspheming injustice -- and the letdown -- remain.