I am a fairly pragmatic person. I love good design, but it has to be purposeful and resilient. There is nothing new being offered that doesn't seem superfluous, so why bother upgrading.

Like with many iterative products, when the next model is just around the corner, it somewhat undermines all their "Innovative, future is now, be your best self" fluff marketing. Why pay a premium to be on the bleeding edge when it only lasts 6 months at best?

Many people I knew just bought a Pixel instead of a Pixel 2. The new one didn't even offer enough to be a competitor it's own last model, so people just bought a Pixel 1 and saved themselves some money.

I keep thinking about the concept of peak comfort. Cars, houses, phones, computers. They're all pretty damn excellent right now. Even if you can't afford the brand new thing, they've been excellent for so long now that even the old things are likely to fulfil your needs just fine. Sometimes you can buy the old thing and it will be better than the budget model new thing.