Chances are you bought a new mobile phone in the last two years and you probably have a few broken ones in your desk draw that you keep meaning to throw out. In fact, if you are anything like the average consumer you will probably accumulate five times as many over the next 10 years, despite all the warnings about living in an increasingly resource-strained world.

But what if your mobile device was like a fine old watch that you felt an emotional attachment to and you took satisfaction from using every day? What if it evolved over your life time, negating the need to constantly upgrade your communications technology when a more functional alternative is released?

The Wandular, developed in partnership with design company Engage by Design, aims to do just that. It is a modular device that would be constantly connected to the cloud, enabling the software to be updated without needing to change the basic casing. The hardware would be made of wood and recycled steel, while also featuring a hologram screen.

The Wandular is one of four concepts to be developed as part of a major campaign by Sony and Forum for the Future, aiming to imagine the kind of technology you could be using in 2025 and encourage designers to build them.

Esther Maughan McLachlan, general manager of sustainability for Sony Europe, said the campaign, dubbed FutureScapes, was designed to encourage companies to create disruptive technologies that could create a more sustainable economy.

“With collaboration at its core FutureScapes sought to shake up the way people think about sustainability and technology,” she said.

“It’s not about predicting the future; instead it’s about getting better at imagining the possibilities. And that means putting people rather than isolated technologies or scientific data in the foreground, creating new connections to jolt us out of conventional ways of thinking.”

But concepts like the Wandular could be closer to becoming a reality than people think.

Designers are already seeking to build products using alternative materials, such as the bamboo mobile phone by the Just ADzero project, while there are also concepts being worked on like Mobikoma, made of tiny interlinked hi-res displays, and Modai, where memory and processors can be upgraded easily.

Another winning FutureScapes design, developed in partnership with The Pipeline Project, is a globally connected village, dubbed Hyper Village, that enables rural communities to have the same technologies as a city.

“Hyper Village is about exploring ways to create more equity between rural and urban communities in the pursuit of a more sustainable future,” said Dan Burgess, of The Pipeline Project.

“It’s about realising the enormous value in remote and rural areas, not just for the communities that live there, but for urban communities as well. This is beyond just physical experiences and materials; it’s also about the transfer and sharing of knowledge and intelligence.”

Sony said the four winning concepts – including a new platform called The Internet of Things Academy and a new business philosophy dubbed “The Shift” that is focused on corporate efficiency – will now be further developed over the coming months in collaboration with the project partners.