Some time between ten and fifteen years ago, Christmas presents made a unique turn.

Games consoles, bicycles and action figures started to take something of a back seat for many. We were entering a new era of present-giving for children and teenagers; the era of the mobile phone.

I can't remember the exact year, but I recall one Christmas one or two people showing off their new state of the art Nokia mobile phone, capable of storing a whopping ten text messages at a time on a mind-blowing 64 pixels per inch screen. Then the following year, there was hardly anyone not swapping ringtones and spending fifteen minutes bluetoothing a picture to someone. It seemed what was previously something the business professional and the show-off rich kids in school had kept to themselves, suddenly was a necessity for, well, almost everyone.

In the years that followed, as mobile phone technology enhanced and updated itself annually, the decision of what to buy someone for Christmas became increasingly easier. Almost every child wanted the latest mobile phone, and soon after, so did their parents.

Before long, mobile phones became theChristmas present for children and adults alike. But as with most fields of technology, the capabilities and engineering of these devices did nothing but progress, along with the price tags, each generation offering something new and innovative for which another hundred pounds could be added at the checkout.

First there came colour screens, then file-sharing, then cameras, then the Walkman (which you'll still find to this day being "blasted" out on the back of a bus somewhere, much to everyone's annoyance but the person holding it), then emailing and internet, then social networking and video-playback, then high-definition and so on. Manufacturers rose and fell like the tide, each giving the mobile phone something new to add to the itinerary of features. And still these devices were the ideal Christmas present.

As we head into Christmas 2014, there is a slight problem with this trend for many; what used to be a £100 top-of-the-range Christmas present now requires in excess of £500 to get the same level of grandeur.

Years ago merely having a Walkman built in to a mobile phone was enough to cause a gasp of joy on Christmas morning, now the same gasp requires something with more processing power than the Apollo missions that sent many an astronaut to the moon and back. It has to be able to connect with people around the world, face-to-face, in real time, while downloading a movie, playing mobile games with graphics more powerful than a Playstation 3 and all the while being slim enough to lose through a crack in the pavement.

Is it time the mobile phone stood down as the ultimate Christmas present? Has it already been forced down? Have mobile phones and tablets simply become too expensive to give as gifts for the majority of us?

In a way, yes. Now, I rarely see people going into shops and buying mobile phones, either for themselves or as gifts. The tech required to keep up with the fast-pace of the industry is simply too expensive, as are the profit margins required by the tech giants that develop them. In more cases than not, now, when someone is buying a top-end mobile phone as a Christmas gift, they will take it out on a contract. A gift for an annual holiday that takes two years to pay off. This is, for me, the tipping point. The sums no longer add up. The viability of this gift (at the high-end level) is simply no longer there.

So what next? Do we accept that the current level of technology in phones and tablets is good enough as it is? That to increase their abilities is simply increasing the price tag to unaffordable? Of course not, we're not hardwired to think like that. We are a species of evolvement. We crave progress. We will not cease to admire enhancements to technology, we will simply need to change the way we gain access to it, either for ourselves or as gifts.

When I was a child, the one thing I wanted for Christmas more than anything else in the world was a Brio wooden train set. I got it. And I got many more hours of enjoyment out of it than I ever could have with a mobile phone or tablet - in fact, I'm sure it's still at my mother's house somewhere to this day. Christmas gifts change. Eras of Christmas gifts come and go. I think the era of the mobile phone as a Christmas gift is slowly declining and I wonder what the next decade's one will be.

I'm off to find that train set.