[p1necone]

Yeah I'm on the same page - I spend a couple hundred bucks on a low-end-of-midrange android phone every few years (usually because I broke the old one by doing something stupid like walking into the ocean with it in my pocket). I can't fathom why I would want to spend 5-10x on a flagship to do... what exactly?

My current phone (Motorola g34) runs all the games fine, and that's probably the heaviest thing people use phones for. I do take photos, but like I'm not running a photography business, and social media compresses them to shit anyway so the quality is perfectly fine.

[vladvasiliu]

Well, you could buy a waterproof phone, which wouldn't break if you walked into the ocean with it in your pocket?

I use my phones as GPS attached to my motorbike's handlebars. They get drenched in downpours, frozen in the winter, and baked in the summer sun multiple times a year. They don't skip a beat and only require the occasional battery change.

My current phone is an iphone 14, still on its original battery. It replaced a 7 which had its battery changed 5 years in. The 7 replaced a galaxy s5 which I stupidly forgot in a taxi, but it was still good enough for my uses.

There are uses for higher-end phones, among which "longer periods between changes".