New Smartphones news and reviews

CIO - Lately I've had some trouble coming up with story ideas I'm truly excited about.

New smartphones are unveiled every month, if not every week. At the same time, I've never been a writer who struggles for ideas. So I have to ask myself, "What's going on?"

The most telling answer I can come up with is the feeling I get whenever I unpack a new smartphone I receive for review. It's a feeling of skepticism, of anxiety - of yes, boredom - because I know it's probably not going to be easy to come up with a unique angle or explain in a review why this new phone stands out from the pack. Maybe the new phone has a weak camera or bad battery life. Perhaps its display is discolored or pixelated. Does it support memory cards or have a removable battery pack?

If there's no noticeable flaw, it's going to be difficult to differentiate. That's the sad truth of today's high-end smartphone market: Most top-of-the-line handhelds released today provide comparable overall experiences, at least from a hardware perspective. (Personal software preferences and investment in mobile apps or in specific ecosystems can change this equation a bit, but I'm talking hardware here.)

And there's more pressure than ever to buy new phones more frequently.

The pace of innovation in the handset world has slowed to a point at which the focus on extraneous pixel counts for smartphone cameras (I'm looking at you, Lumia 1020), fingerprint scanners that may or may not actually be secure (hi, iPhone 5s), cool-but-mostly-useless UI gestures (all of the latest Samsung Galaxy releases) and absurdly gigantic displays (take your pick of today's "phablets") are among the most notable selling points for new phones.

General "newness," is also as powerful a selling point as any, as in "It's the latest and greatest, so it must be better." This last line of reasoning is a common one, especially among people who pride themselves on being tech-savvy gadget geeks. It doesn't matter if it's really a better device, it's newer.

At the same time, there's more pressure to upgrade more frequently: From the people around you, from companies selling smartphones and from wireless carriers.

Everybody has a smartphone these days. More than ever before, the devices are fashion accessories, status symbols and cultural differentiators. It's an unfortunate truth, but harsh judgments are made every day based on smartphone "fanboism." If you're an Apple fanboi, and you see someone in a bar using an older BlackBerry, there's a good chance you'll quickly judge them. ( BlackBerrys aren't cool, you heard?)

Turn on your television set during a major sporting event and you're visually and aurally assaulted by advertising from companies including Samsung, Apple, Motorola, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. It's not just commercials; your favorite sports team's stadium is very likely plastered with ads from one of these companies. Or maybe the stadium is named after one of them. (Off the top of my head, I can think of four stadiums with the name "AT&T" in them.) Primetime TV is even worse.

In the never-ending quest to sell more phones, wireless carriers are rolling out new plans that let you upgrade to new smartphones more frequently, and for less money up front. AT&T and T-Mobile are leading this charge in the United States with the Next and JUMP programs, respectively, but the other major carriers can't be far behind. And it's only a matter of time before the idea spreads outside the United States.

Smartphone makers are also coming up with clever new ways to sell more phones to more people in less time. Which spotlights another interesting trend: Smartphones don't seem to last as long as they used to.