Choosing a new device: Different Stroke For Different Blokes

So my faithful Samsung Galaxy Note 2 had come to 2 years of age. I had since did many things with the device which is obscene if I have to list it all here. My overall experience on it; very good, durable and robust. If only the device can upgrade itself to be faster, with better camera and features, I would had kept it - but lo and behold, as chinese sayings goes..

"The old one never goes, the new one will never come"

So choosing a new device may seems to be trivial for many folks out there. See which one you like, check price, check if anyone using it (it wont be wrong) and just pay for it. But chances is that we are all currently using a generation of smartphone - which one way or another buying a new device is an upgrade. So would the usual way of choosing a device of choice is applicable ?

First and foremost, let's not talk about what the manufacturers are producing but instead, we look into what we want as priorities... (Overall, we aren't going to just limit ourselves by some products of a fruit company right ?)

Some basic layman questions:-

1. What device size are you looking at ? Are your vision limited by the size of the screen ?
2. Would the camera be your higher priority ?
1. At least how many megapixels ?
2. Would you take a lot of selfies ?
3. Can it perform well in low lighting conditions ?
4. Do you need a great photography flash light ?
3. Do you want water proofing or water resistence features ? Would you consider your device to go to places where electronic devices aren't recommended ? (like Sea, Swimming Pool and such)
4. Do you want fast charging feature, a high capacity battery or super power saving mode in the device as to address the power consumption / management issues ?
5. Do you want a device which is nice to look at (curvy wavey) or don't bothered because you're gonna get a case anyway ?
6. Would you have a preference of brand of device ? (i.e. My TV at home is Sony and my gaming console is also Sony PS4, so getting a Sony device wont go wrong)
7. Are you an advanced user who would customize the device to your heart's intend or just buy and use whatever that comes out of the box ?
8. Would your secondary priorities on the device to be gaming, productivity use (like office) or health tracking ?
9. Would you foresee that you'll keep the device for 2 years until the battery juice is all gone and of which you wont change the whole device just because of a dead battery ?
10. Would you be storing movies, music and other large files in your device ?
11. Would you be running multiple applications at a single go and wont care if you close the previous one or not ?
12. Would additional features like a stylus, finger print scanner, heart rate monitor makes sense to you in your everyday life ?
13. Would update of new feature in Android excites you a lot ?
14. Would you be bragging about processor speed or screen pixel density of your device to your other friends ?

These are just some basic questions but remember; there are continuation from here as we are not buying the first smartphone. The usual question is "Is it BETTER than whatever I have today ?" or "Does it STILL HAVE whatever I have today ?". At the end, it all adds and minus from your base experience and thoughts of what you have today. While folks like me can tell you what is great for myself because of some super duper hyper feature of the device which we like but ultimately you need to make the decision if it makes sense to you. In a nutshell...

"Different Strokes for Different Blokes"