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.
There is a HUGE difference in 4 and 12 GB of ram if you’re using 20 different apps at once that are all running background tasks.
The camera raw megapixel are of little significance these days but things like optical zoom or a larger sensor and aperture make a lot of difference.
The main reason to upgrade otherwise is unsupported OS versions. you’ll stop getting security updates leaving your phone vulnerable to attack.
4 GB is not sufficient. Glad to have bought a 6 GB RAM device 4 years ago. 6-8 GB RAM is more than sufficient, 12 is overkill. There is some device now even with 24 GB RAM.