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Whilst there will always be "some" people who want the flagship models (like with video cards for PCs) the manufacturers seem to be totally out of touch with the majority of people who don't want to spend half a months salary on a phone when the one they have and probably the several older models they have stuffed in draws are more than "good enough" for what they do

MOST people just make and receive calls, send and receive texts, use some social media, run a few apps and maybe listen to some music or watch videos

A phone from 5 years ago can still do ALL of that with some processing power to spare

Factor in non removable batteries and the lack of headphone sockets or memory card slots on many new phones and the newer models don't even have the life expectancy of the older ones and therefore aren't as good of an investment in terms of price/years of use

Yes the manufacturers "want" people to spend upwards of $/£600 per year on a new phone for most people that is utterly ridiculous especially when more and more people are realising that the phone on offer for 6 or 700 dollars/pounds probably cost the manufacturer less than 50 to manufacture and will only last as long as the battery

Throw in bloatware and spyware from the phone manufacturer and the OS provider and you don't really have a very tempting product

All the fuss about cameras is irrelevant for most people too, any reasonable 4 mp camera was "good enough" for most people, many barely ever take photos apart from the odd snapshot now and then. So prices being hiked up on mainstream models for the quality of cameras and lenses only a small percentage need or really use enough to justify the cost also puts quite a few people off buying them as often the camera is pretty much the only main upgrade of note making it completely uninteresting for many people over several of the previous years models that can be bought for a fraction of the cost

So for me last year was the first year I opted out of the Samsung treadmill and bought an earlier years model for a fraction of its cost with a memory card slot, removable battery, perfectly adequate camera, screen, memory and processor saving myself enough to upgrade my PC motherboard and CPU in one of my PCs which I will get MUCH more value for money from