Cell (mobile) phones have been on a serious diet since their conception well over a decade ago. They have moved from being the size of fax machine to items no bigger than a cigarette lighter in many cases. However, phones began to take on new more advanced roles such as Internet browsing and being MP3 players, and this led to something of a turnaround for handset sizes. Handsets such as the iphone and other ’smart’ phones did have improved styling, but are considerably larger than many of the previous generation handsets. However, this is soon set to change.
There is no longer a need to have every one of your phone’s files and functional programs loaded onto your handset, and this is down to advances in wireless and 3G connectivity. What would happen is that information and programs would be streamed into the phone from an external source only when you request them. This then allows phones to essentially act like shells, that can be used for different things at different times, just by feeding different information into them.
A central hub will be needed and this can be either be located in your home or with your service provider. This hub will contain all your programs, songs, pictures etc, and will be able to feed them to your phone in an instant. You will still need a certain amount of hardware in the phone, such as a camera and other electrical components, but you will be able to save huge amounts of space where memory, processors and mini ac fans would normally be found. This means then that phones could be not much bigger than cable ties and you could even wear them as accessories such on a necklace or as a wrist-band. Breaking free of the weight and size that phones have had to comply with in years gone by could spawn a whole new era for them.