Should Modern Illustrations Use Older Designs?

This is a question that's come up a number of times for me as I illustrate various books. For my first book I was faced with the issue of whether I should use an older model fire truck. If I remember correctly, the client liked the older fire trucks and wanted one of those to represent the small town. I think that worked fine. However a lot more of my illustrations have gadgets like phones, tv's, clocks, cars, etc. which raise  a question for me. Sometimes the more modern designs are so sleek and so small and simply not as illustrator friendly as the older models.
          I'll give you one example that comes to mind. I'm currently doing a book that will have an alarm clock on various pages. My concern with the newer clocks is that they may not be as easy to illustrate as a recognizable object if it's further in the background. When you see an older model alarm clock with the round face and the bells on top it is easily recognizable as a small suggested shape or close up.

    For a different book I had to show a girl in a crosswalk with a cell phone. The trouble was how to illustrate that because modern cell phones are tiny or even just hang on the ear. SO I ended up oversizing it a bit so it wouldn't just look like she had her hand on her head.  When I look into the future I see this becoming more and more of an issue for illustrators as I fully expect we will need to rely on older models to get our points across. Imagine having to illustrate a guy reading a newspaper in a time period where physical paper newspapers have been replaced by digital readers. You would have this slim piece of plastic in his hands that could be mistaken for any number of other objects. Not the same as a good ole black and white newspaper with all of it's glorious creases, fold and the shear size and shape of it. We've gone from record players to tape players, to CD players and now into the tiny MP3 players.

    So I wonder how other's generally address this issue.