2019 has shown off some really cool phones. 5G is now officially a thing, screens are now fingerprint sensors, and paint jobs look a lot like magic. The temptation to pick one of them up is pretty strong, especially when we grab our current phone and see how it no longer has that new car smell. Here's a crazy idea, though — those features that we want will still be there next year and that phone we already have probably still does all the things that made us want it in the first place.

New phones are fun and can be worth it. But your phone probably still works just fine.

This might be an unpopular opinion on a smartphone enthusiast site, and I can imagine the people who work tirelessly to show off these new phones feel very differently, but you probably don't need to buy a new phone every year.

All of us know that person who is holding on to a phone that's four or five years old and says they will use it until it no longer turns on. While I admire the resolve, I know most of us just can't go that way because we're enthusiasts (read: junkies in need of a techno-fix) and several years is like forever in the tech world. But if you have a Pixel 3 or a Note 9 or a OnePlus 6T you probably could sit out this year and be just fine. And save a bunch of cash you could use to buy into another obsession.

That's not to say that 2019 didn't bring (or will bring because Google likes to hold out until the end) some really innovative stuff. Improvements in design — both hardware and software — are everywhere and whatever you love most about having a smartphone probably got better with this year's phones than it was last year. I'm not trying to claim that these improvements aren't worth having. I am saying that they will still be there when the phone we spent a lot of money on last year is so old we no longer appreciate it.