About five years ago, I left a job which had been providing me a phone. I was replacing them every two years since that was the regime at the time, usually for

About five years ago, I left a job which had been providing me a phone. I was replacing them every two years since that was the regime at the time, usually for an "exotic" flagship-- I had an early LTE Galaxy S2 which had zero long-term support, a Lumia 1020, and a LG V10, for example. When it stopped being funny money, I ended up buying only low-midrange devices (Motorola E4, Umidigi F1, and most recently, a Nokia G20). Once you get to like $150, you've left the absolute bottom corner-cutting segment of the market and can get a competent device. It seems like at every price increment much above there, they start doing the "hand you something while taking away something else" game. At about $300, you start losing MicroSD and 3.5mm. At about $500, once you get past Pixel territory, you lose the option for vanilla Android and have to deal with big ugly vendor packin BS. At the very top, half the phones are now less usable devices and more science-fair projects to demonstrate how hinge technology is advancing. I suspect it's really "device as jewelry/status symbol" at this point so you need the gimmicks to close the sale. Meanwhile, weird bottomfeeder brands like Oukitel can sell a $200-300 phone with a 10000mAh battery, but the combined engineering might of the Samsung organization seems unable to spin that particular magic even on a $1300 device.