[pjmlp]

Additionally, most people on Android world use pre-paid and only replace the phones when they break down, get lost, stolen,....

Besides that, phones have plateaued in meaningful features for average consumers, they are good enough for their job.

[FirmwareBurner]

Phones have plateaued for a long time but only now we're seeing this massive dip so peoples' lower purchasing power is to blame.

Also flagship level phones have gotten much more expensive to bot to further put gas on the fire. In 2020 I got my OnePlus 7T for around 440 Euros, not the absolute pinnacle for the time, but close, now an equivalent model is something like 600-700 Euros. Yeah, we had inflation since then but Gawd damn that's steep!