The new shiny smartphones for 2014 are being launched now, from the Sony Xperia Z2, HTC One (All New) and the Samsung Galaxy S5 plus new phones from everybody.

The new handsets all have small improvements over last years and sometimes go 3 steps forwards and one step backwards when a feature is removed that you really liked.

For the first time in many years none of the new phone announcements are making me want to upgrade my current Samsung Note 3. The camera is excellent in the area of photography that I focus on which is landscapes and macro. For example the shot below taken on the Note3 is just under 13mb in file size providing tons of detail. The link to the original is on my Flickr.

Then I look at all the other features of the camera from 4K video recording and so on. It is not perfect. It struggles in low light but then so do most smartphone cameras.

But obviously the Note 3 has another 200 features and that is being pessimistic! I have added a heart rate monitor via an app and via apps I’ve added so much more.

What I’m saying is that my current phone is extremely reliable and superb at carrying out all the things I want it to do and therefore I’ve reached a plateau whereby anything new does not add any value. In fact, the time it takes to recreate my personalised setup on a phone is not worth the hassle of changing to a new shiny piece of hardware.

How do you feel about your current phone ?