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.
This is why I exclusively stick to Pixels. Honestly don’t really care about the hardware, it’s okay. But it’s the only phone that lets you flash it and reflash it with a custom key so you can have verified boot on a custom OS.
Android is a tricky situation, there’s very few phones that actually allow you to unlock the bootloader, and only Pixels can do it securely. Samsungs are basically a no go unless it’s an older phone that has gotten cracked open. Like Samsung S5 old.
So ironically Google phones are by far the best to degoogle your phone lol, and they actually go above and beyond to let you do so. Even the new Pixel fold and tablets support this. I personally recommend GrapeheneOS or CalyxOS for these devices, both are really good.
I choose my custom OS first and then pick the actual physical phone second. For me, I value software over hardware, but obviously that’s important too.