Steve Litchfield argues that sometimes you just need to stop lusting, stop fiddling and simply enjoy.

...to which I'd add "a time to tweak and a time to leave well alone"...

Does this scenario sound familiar?

You buy device X, love it to pieces, and over the next month or two you install all your favourite applications and games, you set the menus to be perfect for your day to day use, you tweak and fiddle and then proclaim it to be well and truly 'tuned'. And then the next day you see device Y has become available. Lust sets in and you start mentally listing all the ways in which it's better than device X. After a little saving and some arm-bending of your SO, you give in and purchase device Y (or persuade your network to let you have it as an upgrade), relegating to device X to a drawer or perhaps selling it on eBay.

You love device Y to pieces, and (you can see where this is going, can't you?) over the next month or two you install all your favourite applications and games, you set the menus to be perfect for your day to day use, you tweak and fiddle....

Etc. ad infinitum. We're talking about 'early adopters/geeks/technology professionals', call us what you will, and 'shiny, shiny ultra-high tech gadgets'. As my daughter would say, 'Do the math'...

But having gone through the setup and tweaking process now for around 6 smartphones in the last 16 months, I find myself back at the exact same device I started with (the Nokia N95 'classic', in case you're wondering) and I have to question whether all the swapping and fiddling around was actually worth it.

You see, the value of a smartphone to our lifestyles isn't just about the abilities of the handset itself. Sure, the extra-clear camera and the higher RAM spec make a difference to usability. But just as big a deal are:

• how you set it up (your chosen menu order and preferences, your profiles, your settings)
   
  
• what you choose to install (from Download! freebies to third party utilities to full commercial software, no two of us are alike and, as I've already described, that's the beauty of smartphones)
   
  
• what your smartphone knows about you (from cookies in Web telling sites who you are, remembering your location and password, to all your Messaging email account details)
   
  
• what the aforementioned software knows about your smartphone (such as media and application licenses, IMEI-specific registration codes)
   
• the fact that, if your smartphone is now stable (i.e. doesn't crash regularly), perhaps you should stop adding 'new stuff' and obey the golden rule of tech: 'if it ain't broken, don't fix it'...
   
  
• the (positive) impact on your bank balance (from sticking with one device for longer!)

In other words, reaping the benefits of a stable, configured, working device after weeks or months of twiddling, tweaking and experimenting, will probably outweigh the marginal benefits of a slight increase in specification, gained by chasing after the latest shiny release. And having to start all over again. And again. And again.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian

PS. Oh, who am I kidding. It's a disease. Anyone care to bet I won't have switched device again in a couple of months' time? No, thought not!