The mobile phone will be extinct in five years as people switch to wearing mobile computers, a professor has predicted.
Prof Nigel Linge, of the University of Salford, says the future of telecommunications is "wearable technology".
He said the functions of the mobile phone will be dispersed into components which can be embedded within a person’s clothing.
He explained: "In five years instead of mobile phones we will all carry mobile computers on us.
"So for example the communicator on our collar might send signals to the keyboard on our sleeve.
"Hands-free technology is very sophisticated at present and will continue to advance to the point where carrying a phone will be pointless.
"Already we are seeing simple everyday objects such as wheelie bins with in-built communication systems which can relay information via a computer."
Prof Linge, aged 45, added that phones were already effectively computers.
"The latest phone products are being sold for their additional attributes such as cameras and internet access," he said.
"It is 130 years since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and we are now moving into a world of mobile computing where voice communication is just one service."
The engineer, who teaches at the university’s School of Computing, Science & Engineering, outlined his vision in a lecture called From Talking 2 Txtng.
The university lecture – which is open to the public – will feature an exhibition of historic telephonic equipment from 1980s "brick" handsets to a Morse Code telegraph sounder from the early 1900s.
