"They've been letting the prices creep up much faster than inflation for several years now and they've hit the point where people can't afford the flagship phon

"They've been letting the prices creep up much faster than inflation for several years now and they've hit the point where people can't afford the flagship phones anymore" I think it's because you don't need a flagship. 10 years ago phones were crap (let's be honest) - slow, small etc. You needed to pay a lot for a phone with a decent battery life, large screen etc. Now you don't. It's like 3d graphics cards back in the day. You needed quite an expensive one for games to look good. For years now though you've been able to play pretty much every game with very cheap graphics cards so long as you're happy to turn some of the settings down a little. With Android, you know you're phones going to get abandoned with 18-24 months so why not get a £250 phone instead of a £800 one?