Just when you thought it was safe to say you had it all, they brought out a newer, smaller and more desirable model.
This is the curse of the gadget class - those who find never-ending joy in the relentless march of innovation - as gizmos become more exotic, ever smaller and more functional.
Witness the iPod, which gets more feature-laden each year, even if it merely offers brighter screens, a longer battery life and more storage.
WHAT IT MEANS
 Feature-laden gadgets popular
Home theatre is the new cinema
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You know you don't really need one of those funkier coloured nanos, but, well, there is a good reason there is a difference between need and want.
But you'll have heard a word this year that makes you wonder if you're buying brand new but already obsolete technology. That word is at once a beacon of hope and something of a swearword. Convergence, for all its false promises and over-hyped melodrama, is inevitable, however.
Simply put, it means that your cellphone will ultimately become a music player and a megapixel camera, which records videos, has super-fast Internet access for e-mailing and browsing, uses WiFi, has an FM radio and built-in GPS, replaces your wristwatch - and makes calls, if you still have any battery power left.
Cellphones can do all of these things to varying degrees, depending on the model, though top-end phones like the Nokia N95, HP's iPAQs and Sony Eric-sson's P990i can give you all of these features.
Need versus want
You might find yourself asking if you really want them? And, you might also find yourself wondering what new essential features you are prepared to sacrifice your battery life for?
Music is certainly one of them, and after an integrated camera, this is probably the most sought-after feature for most phone users.
Though standalone digital cameras still take better pictures, the cellphone continues to be the convergence supermodel, as other gadgets play catch-up.
Even iPods have had their share of convergence, being equipped with the ability to display pictures and, recently, videos, which you can also play through a TV. Speaker docks that double as iPod chargers have effectively cut hi-fi out of the loop, taking over particularly in cases where battery-powered music is required with a fairly decent sound.
Several Samsung handsets, like the skinny D900i (which seems positively fat at 12,9 mm next to its impossibly thin X820 sibling at 6,9 mm) have an FM radio and let you play videos, music and even PowerPoint slides off your phone.
Sony Ericsson, which is climbing the sales charts with its Walkman-branded phones, has released a clever set of add-on speakers that accessorise these handsets with their music-controlling buttons. The latest W880i is a sliver of a phone, with arguably 10 times the functionality and many times more storage capacity than the original tape-playing Walkmans.
Nokia has even refreshed its multimedia Nseries range with music-playing versions of its phones, complete with a 3,5 mm jack for proper over-ear DJ headphones.
Games take over the lounge
In the living room, there is another kind of convergence going on as home theatres take over from the cinema as the primary form of entertainment.
A new generation of games consoles, like Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, integrate new high-definition (HD) video quality with their games, while incorporating the ability to play new HD format DVDs - though each offers a different format in a still unresolved conflict for supremacy between HD DVD and Blu-ray. The Xbox launched last year uses the former, which is an add-on, while the PS3, which hit the country only a few months ago, has Blu-ray built in.
