I guess it comes down to the person's use case.
I'm also on the side of not needing flagship phones cause I just don't see the reason for my use case, it would be an utter waste of my money.
Recently upgraded to a Realme 8 4g 6/128 for ~230 $ and even this goes like barely half utilized by my needs if even that, my previous phone for almost 3 and half years was a Meizu M6 Note with a Snapdragon 625/3GB memory and 32Gg storage.
My magical budget has been 300 Euros +- 30. I have used Galaxy Ace 2 from 2012 up to 2014, then got Note 3 Neo and used it until 2018 and now I have Galaxy A50. A50 will have to last minimum 2 more years, if not 4 more. I think that 6 year phone is doable, before experience starts to become poor and phone falls apart (more like wears out). I also use it caseless and did that for nearly 2 years. I don't really miss cases.
In recent years, there have been some interesting offers at 250 Euros, so maybe in future I will finally buy a device from slightly lower tier, but who knows? I still plan to use current phone for a long time, things may change and it's cheaper to just use what you already have.
Sure I can see that my new phone is snappier when it comes to everyday/standard apps but everything I do I could also do on my Meizu all the same.
Its not a terrible experience by any means. 'stuff like watching YT, browsing internet in general, checking reviews on TPU and whatnot, messenger/discord with a few ppl to chat with'
I have watched comparison videos and I really can't see a difference at that. I can see a difference between my own Note 3 Neo and A50, it's really significant, but between A50 or S21, nope. I can bet that my A50 might be a little bit faster as I messed with dev settings, adb and on software side it might be somewhat lighter.
Where I can clearly see the upgrade is the gaming performance ofc but I don't game that much on my phone nowadays, while its a nice extra its definitely not a main reason for me to upgrade.
I used to game a bit with Ace 2, but before initial cool factor of doing that on phone and better quality of games back then, somehow I don't see an appeal to game on tiny device like that anymore. I don't care about that anymore, but I'm pretty sure that I could run GTA SA well. PC is my main gaming platform and then comes X360, which I use for literally only one game - Forza Motorsport 3.
Don't take too many photos either, I was already more or less fine with what my old phone could do and perfectly fine with the Realme + gcam instead of the factory software. 'factory took too vivid images for my taste'
And that's where we differ greatly. I take a lot of photos and quality should be reasonable. A50 is somewhat disappointing, but serviceable, still a big downgrade from Note 3 Neo. Ultrawide is nice to have and is fun to use sometimes, unfortunately it's even more sucky than main cam, which is already not great.
To be completely honest if I wanted to I could still easily use that Meizu as my daily driver and not be bothered, I just wanted to buy something new and also cause the 32GB internal storage was getting problematic lately.
Unless something bad happens to this phone I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon, preferably not for the next 3-4 years and then buy one 200-300$ phone at most.
I have been looking at newer A52 and it looks way more luxurious than just midrange phone. Frankly, it rocks for the price, but on the other hand, I wished that lower end line up was more decent or A52 cheaper and more basic. And since middle class is now so good, I think that S21 just fails to have a reason to exist. It's a bit better, but not really much. And well S21 Ultra is straight up e-peen phone, along with Fold/Flip.
In terms of brands, I think that Samsung is best all around brand due to general quality, updates, political stability (I sure as hell don't want Huawei case to happen to me with GMS being wiped off my phone), pricing. I still don't like Chinese brands as they shit out decent phone, but anything beyond that is questionable, also UIs are a bit out there. Out of them Meizu, OnePlus, Motorola, Realme could be real considerations. Xiaomi is interesting, but it's too much like Huawei in terms of questionable political situation. Brands like Asus, Google ruined their own reputation with appalling Nexus 7 that I had (it was full of issues, clear lack of quality control and crappy updates. Nexus Devices were known for that, but maybe after rebranding to Pixel they have changed. Asus doesn't seem like it did). Sony is interesting, but their prices are awful. Nokia fell from grace due to flooding low end market, poor update policy and not having anything high end or much of mid range. It's literally like Google, but worse. So screw them and on top of that, their all phones feel ancient with zero things looking like progress. They completely ruined their Zeiss branding edge that they once had. Nokia is just depressing nowadays.
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