We hit peak cell phone back around 2015. Indeed, the older phones have a nice privacy feature the new ones don't: they are too old for Apple and Google to bother quietly rolling out their 'think of the children' spyware on, which, once installed, will be used to determine who photographed police brutality at protests, who photographed a senator with a young intern, who photographed Chinese PLA soldiers hauling those with 'low social credit scores' to Re-education Through Labor camps.

Unless you crack the phone's screen and the battery is shot, there's no point in buying a new one. I'll buy another used one on Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist when I must.

I use a 2014 mobile phone. It has a good camera with Optical Image Stabilization, just like brand new $1000+ phones. It has a high density retina display that displays razer sharp text, just like new phones. It can load all the web pages people read and all the most popular apps, just like new phones.