It's smart from apple to raise their entry level point. People who want an iphone over android wont budge for the extra, means more money for them.
I've had android phones and iphones in the past and although the hardware is good on both sides the QA from apple on ios was just ahead compared to android.
On my pixel phone (so straight from google) the apps wouldn't auto update no matter what, i had to do it manually regularly, and that was really frustrating.
On the iphone SE 2nd gen i've bought i've never had any issues, never had to reset it in 4 years, OS and apps updating seaminglessly.
Plus when you compare the support lifespan, android phones get 3 years of official security updates after they are released while iphones get 8. Of couse you can expand the android one with custom roms, but they break functionalities that use proprietary TPM drivers, so important apps like banking dont work anymore. Which means on average an iphone will last twice as long as an android phone.
It seems more worth to me to buy a $600 phone that last 6 years than 2 x $400 phones over the same time.
I'm wondering if google fixed their app updating system since then.
