I had to change my mobile phone this week This doesn't happen to often as I tend to stick with a mobile for several years before changing it and even then the change is usually prompted as the old mobile starts to fail in some respect.

Previous phones have had broken aerials, became obsolete because the phone network went digital or critical assemblies like the keypad fell apart. This time the battery started giving out or may be my usage went up, or perhaps both at the same time. Suffice to say that when I started having to charge it every night to ensure I had enough juice to last the next day it had to go.

I bought a Sony Ericsson, W995 which, if anyone wants to know, is a nice bit of kit. Well built with a nice solid feel to it and more on-board functions than the Starship Enterprise. You name it, it has it. 8 megapixel Camera, HSDPA, GPS, SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, MP3 player, FM Radio, WiFi, Bluetooth to name but a few. It even has it's user manual on board which is just as well as the phone would otherwise require a license to use which you could only obtain after years of training and passing a Ph.D.-level examination.

No matter, the main feature as far as I am concerned is that it has an obscene number of talk-hours and a standby time measured in something akin to epochs. It is sitting next to me now emitting inordinate amounts of radio signals across a huge numbers of frequencies and slowly making me sterile. This is okay though because by the time it does any real damage the netbook I have on my lap would have cooked me.

As regular readers of this column know I like to remain topical even if by the time you read this a few weeks may have passed as I tend to write several weeks in advance of publication. So, what is topical in the world of technology at the moment?

Steam-power.

In particular a steam-powered car called “Inspiration” that has just broken the land-speed record for steam powered cars with an average speed of 140mph. Surprisingly, the vehicle that held the record before, a “Stanley Steamer”, had achieved 127mph back in 1906 so the modern day result was quite close to the old record despite the application of modern technology in the car.

A bit like my new phone really, all that technology and it doesn't make my phone calls much quicker.