The Queen uses an old Nokia brick to keep in touch with her family, her son has revealed.

       For reasons of national security, little is known about the mobile phones that the Royal Family use.

       Elizabeth II was rumoured to own a Blackberry, while it has been said that the King does not own a phone and lets his staff take calls.

       Asked if his family uses WhatsApp to keep in touch, Tom Parker Bowles told Woman & Home magazine: “We do – my children, my sister and cousins – but my mum still uses an old-fashioned Nokia telephone, so [she] can’t.

       “I think it’s for security.”

       He confessed he can never get hold of his mother, but only because she’s so busy.

       “She’s working a lot harder,” he said.

       “She’s always worked quite hard [so] it’s still the case of, I ring my mother, she doesn’t answer, I look on the television [and think] ‘Ah! She’s in Jersey’.”

       Old fashioned Nokias are sometimes labelled “bricks” because of their sturdiness in comparison to modern smartphones.

       They do not have apps, such as WhatsApp, which are supported by modern smartphones and are remembered fondly for games such as Snake.

       The Queen has a difficult past with security when it comes to phone calls – in 1989 she became embroiled in “tampongate” when an intimate recording of a call she had with then Prince Charles was leaked.

       Earlier this year, Prince William voiced his opinion on mobile phones, saying that we spend too much time on them.

       Speaking at the opening of a youth facility in March, the Prince of Wales spoke with teenagers who confessed to spending too much time on their phone.

       Prince William told them “the grown ups are guilty of it too”. He said people across generations spend “ages on our phones” and that “we have got to get better at it”.