Other than your carrier give it for free or cheap, I don’t really see the reason why should you buy new phone. I’ve been using Redmi Note 9 for past 3 years and recently got my had on Poco F5. I don’t see the point of my ‘upgrade’. I sold it and come back to my Note 9. Gaming? Most of them are p2w or microtransaction garbage or just gimped version of its PC/Console counterpart. I mean, $400 still get you PS4, TV and Switch if you don’t mind buying used. At least here where I live. Storage? Dude, newer phone wont even let you have SD Card. Features? Well, all I see is newer phones take more features than it adds. Headphone jack, more ads, and repairability are to name a few. Battery? Just replace them. However, my Note 9 still get through day with one 80% charge in the dawn. Which takes 1 hour.
I am genuinely curious why newer phone always selling like hot cakes. Since there’s virtually no difference between 4gb of RAM and 12gb of RAM, or 12mp camera and 100mp camera on phone.
I used to do that about 10-15 years ago. I think the subsidies got to be not as good around the same time that phone prices rose sharply. Whereas you might have previously paid $200, and gotten a $500 subsidy for a $700 MSRP phone, now that $500 off a $1000+ MSRP doesn’t seem like as good a deal. I think they also widened the pricing gap between the prepaid and post paid plans, and/or started offering “discounts” for BYOD plans. Seems like the last couple upgrades the cheapest option for me now is to just buy the phone outright and then find a cheap plan.
For anyone in Saskatchewan, check out LUM mobile. It’s a Sasktel run MVNO that actually has a unique pricing structure that’s pretty competitive.