Fighting the urge to splurge on a new phone.

I was once a technology freak who always had to have the latest and greatest gadget to tinker with. When I built custom PC's, I never went for the best processor, I would go with a step or two below the best and invest the money in water cooling kits, blocks, memory etc and see how far I could overclock a machine. The very last machine I had built (before married life) was around $5,000 cost including a new at the time 24' Dell Widescreen HD LCD Monitor. That alone was roughly $1,200.

I did much the same with cell phones, upgrading them several times throughout my contracts as I would get bored of them relatively quickly. I think in one years time I had gone through about 5 phones (talking 2004-2006) within a contract period of 2 years. An expensive game to play indeed but I didn't stop there, I was one of many to get Sidekick, the HTC Dream/G1 and yep, sold both a few months later, jumped ship to Verizon, sold that phone, jumped ship back to AT&T.

Now having said that my current phone is the only the phone that I have actually kept for the full term on the 2 year contract. What is the device that has kept me pleased and content for this 2 year period? The Apple iPhone 4 16GB (AT&T), I admit I have always been anti Apple anything, but once I had the iPod Touch 2nd Gen I was hooked and made the switch to an iPhone 4. The polish, build quality and software support is bar-none. My contract doesn't officially end until September 2nd, but I am currently eligible for an upgrade and not sure if I should wait or go for something out now.

I was an android user for roughly 7 months in the infancy of the platform with the G1/Dream and it didn't do it for me. But now that the platform has matured and there are some very stellar devices available I am having a hard time deciding. The Samsung Galaxy Note has caught my eye and for my business needs it would work very well, if not better than my iPhone 4 but from a support stand point I've heard mixed things.

From now to September I am sure a bevy of other devices will come out and wow the world. While there was no iPhone announcement at this summers WWDC, I am sure the next iPhone will be out in the fall. Samsung released their Galaxy S3 and while I haven't messed around with it I am not to enthusiastic about its design but that may change when playing around with it in the stores. The Samsung Galaxy Note is what truly makes me want to upgrade, but with rumors of the Note 2 in the fall, I just can't help but wait it out.

What do you all think? Should I upgrade now, later? Stay with Apple, jump to the Android platform? Let me know!