I was having a discussion with a couple friends of mine just the other day about that concept, in the context of 'phone'. I was saying that a hand-held device that you talk into to talk to someone else far away will always be called a 'phone' because any new device that's invented (radiophone, cordless phone, cellular phone, VOIP phone) that uses the same general form inevitably gets shortened to 'phone' upon use. There are some regions where cellular telephones are called 'cells', sure, but by and large the overarching term when using it for real-time voice communications, at least in my experience, is 'phone'.

(And the verb associated with the use of a phone will always and forever be "call" ;-P )