A STRANGE thing happened recently: Optus called to let me know my contract was up and I could come in to get a new phone.

As for most people, the two-year contract cycle is one of six months of bliss at the new device, a year of satisfaction, and six months of snarling jealousy at all the new phones on the market and rabid dissatisfaction with the old phone that it is not one of the new breed.

But this time around I didn’t shoot out the door and run like a madman through Garema Place.

I like my phone. Admittedly I cheated mid-contract and bought one outright. It’s a model from October 2013, the Google Nexus 5 (made by LG). It only cost $450 direct from Google which was a major step down in price from its predecessors.

It’s got more processing power than my new iMac. This is not an ad for the Nexus 5, pretty much any phones built around the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series chipsets are amazing beasts. I have no doubt recent iPhones are also excellent.

The point is that the technology has advanced to the point we’re no longer gagging for a newer model. (It’s just as it’s hard to find a bad car built since the mid 1990s and that’s terrifying car makers.)

And if cheap mobile devices have enough power what is that going to mean for our work?

Lots more people are working from home, but with the next generation of mobile data and computing solutions we really are going to be able to do office work from anywhere.

Of course, some people are not suited to working from home. It’s certainly hard mustering the motivation to put clothes on before logging in. There are a whole set of distractions.

Working in offices has its downsides, too. It’s easy to get distracted by crisis management, water-cooler gossip and other people’s conversations.

I’m sure many of our dear readers have felt the need to come into the office on Sunday to get deliverables complete after spending the week in meetings and putting out fires.

Years ago, slaving away in the peace and calm of an office one Sunday, I got a reply from a colleague at another firm whom I hadn’t realised was at her desk to get my email.

“You know what the best thing about Sunday is?” she wrote. “It’s the day of the week I get to wear jeans to the office.”

Having said all that, there are huge advantages to being in the office.

Fixing problems and sharing in the gossip is part of building corporate knowledge. Casual conversations with co-workers focused on the same goal can save hundreds of hours otherwise spent chasing down rabbit holes and after wild geese.

Perhaps most important is just sanity testing. We all make bad decisions and having someone nearby to ask: “Is that really a good idea?” at the worst, forces us to clarify our thinking and, at best, saves us from disaster.

It comes down to good management. Good managers know how to get the best out of their people and trust them to come up with the deliverables.

In a world where few of us will ever have an office door to close, being able to go sit on a bench in Glebe Park for two hours to nut out a problem is almost certainly going to be worthwhile.