One of the areas of electronics which has changed so dramatically in the last few years, probably even more than the field of laptops, is the area of mobile telecommunications, or to put it in a nutshell, phones.
I hardly know anyone who does not now have a mobile phone, from the youngest child to the oldest grandma and we have come to rely on them more and more in the last few years. They are no longer just a way of calling home to let your wife know you will be late or getting in touch with that long lost friend.
They have now taken over our lives to such an extent that we rely on them for everything from checking a train timetable, to remembering our family's birthdays.
They have combined several areas of technology which used to be performed by several gadgets, all in one slimline shell. They can be a camera, a diary, a torch, a GPS system or an MP3 player; we can use them to store whole libraries of movies, photos and songs, to check our email or to access websites.
There is little that a modern phone cannot do now and while they do make a valuable addition to our lives, there is the danger that we place too much trust in them and rely on them to far too great an extent.