> No one should feel bad for owning a machine that's a few years old but does everything they need. I'm not convinced that consumer gadgets fill a real need any more rather than just being new and shiny for the sake of being new and shiny.

I disagree that consumer gadgets, especially phones, don't fill a real need anymore. We have at least a good four or five years, minimum, for a lot more to be done in that form factor. It may not necessarily be new sensors, but significant improvement in what's available now. Things like AR and VR have quite a while to mature and bring about more practical use cases than we see now, and smartphones and devices associated with them will be the ones leading the charge there.