When it comes to product design there is always something new on the market. Something bigger, better and louder. When we have all these things, product design comes back into play and we all want it smaller and quieter. This makes product design an ever-changing business and a profitable one to get into as people always want things different to their predecessors.



Take, for example, one area of product design - the market of mobile phones, or cell phones. They have gone from large, brick shaped objects the type Del Boy would be proud of and now it's all about getting as much information and as many capabilities on the smallest, glitziest object you can manage.

Product design has recently bought us the world's smallest functioning phone, the Cellwatch. As the name suggests, this is a wristwatch and mobile phone all in one and is dubbed the latest man toy for those with everything. Of course, spending 400 pounds on one of these new toys you would want to be taken seriously but how could you resist the urge to say 'Go, go gadget' when you saw someone talking up their sleeve?

An iPhone Black Night at 750 pounds does everything apart from the washing up and looks snazzy in gold and black but you can bet most owners will make and receive calls and text messages on it just the same as the cheapies. Such a sad waste of money when you think of all those poor, deluded chavs on council estates around the country that have enough trouble scraping together their top up money, let alone knowing someone rich enough to nick one of these babies off.

Of course, every decent result from product design needs it's competition to make it worth having and the iPhone has the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. With all the advantages of the iPhone, this one has the added ease of a normal keypad - a normal phone then?

If you're looking for a phone that you can put your life into, then try the current offering from the production lines of Nokia - The N95. Veritable state of the art design meets function that you wouldn't want to be without, given its massive 8GB memory, 5 mega pixel camera, video player and visual-audio facility. How did you ever manage without it?

Straight off the shelves of product design but still in the arena of mobile phones to die for comes the Vertu Contellation Rococo. A mere snip at 5,500 pounds you can make calls, send and receive texts, access the internet and send and receive photos. That'll be a bit like my 60 pounds Sony then?

Of course, if you really wanted to push the boat out and money truly was no object you could always splash out on a new Dior mobile phone. Studded with diamonds make this little black phone a must with the ladies and a real treat at 15,000. pounds Let's hope they do it on a pay as you go tariff!

So it truly does depend on how shallow you are then? You could pop down a mobile phone shop and pick up a phone that sends and receives calls, texts and pictures and accesses the internet for 60 pounds or you could go to a fancy shop and pick up a phone that sends and receives calls, texts, pictures and access the internet for 15,000. pounds The wonder of product design is how easily it adapts to our pathetically shallow thinking!