There are lots of compact ham radios now-a-days, smaller than most smartphones. But yes it is something you actually have to pass a test for and get a licence and understand how its used... how to look up repeaters and get their frequency and offset (they usually receive on one frequency and transmit on another) and sometimes need pl code to activate. I've been out of the hobby for many years. But they are useful for other things to, many units have wide band receive so you can pick up everything from weather, AM, FM, even the audio portion of TV broadcasts as well as fire, ems, and police bands, etc.