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And if you thought the phone was weird, what about the necklace?

Nokia called its 7600 phone "a design statement for personal mobility" - but actually, the "Imagewear" products announced at the same time, though apparently even stranger than the phone, are really quite cunning.

The blurb says that Imagewear products are "unique displays of personality". What they really are, however, are experiments in "what will people take with them?"

They're medallions, but instead of being "bling-bling" gold they have images on them. And the images can be changed; you upload a favourite picture to your Imagewear necklace from your camera-phone.

The idea seems whimsical; but there's method in this madness.

What everybody is realising is that the concept of "a phone" is not guaranteed to be a valid one in 2010. Ideas like the IXI Mobile personal mobile gateway have blossomed in the minds of designers, who are trying to separate camera, phone, PDA, and music player into different modules, all linked by wireless.

The trouble is, whatever the device turns out to be, it has to be one which people take with them. The one benchmark which no mobile device can fail is the simplest: "Where is it?"

If it's "back on my desk" or "in my other trousers" or "in my hotel room" it doesn't matter what features it has, or how "cool" it looks, or even what battery life it has. The winning device is the one you have with you.

It may turn out that the phone is the one thing you always have with you. In that case, the phone of tomorrow will form the hub of all the other devices. But it's just as likely that your watch will be the "I never go anywhere without it" gadget; and equally plausibly, it might be an item of jewellery.

The Imagewear products will ship early 2004.