I agree. I think phone hardware became "good enough" a few years back (as PCs did around 2010). The last time I upgraded is only because the repair guy changing my battery broke the cell antenna. I'm fine using a 10yo flagship phone, IF it's not sabotaged by the OS and app developers bloating what runs on said hardware.

I can't think of any apps other than games and the browser that need anything above a 10yo phone to run perfectly.

For mobile games, that's a given, but it's something that only kids care about.

As for web browsing, it will forever be trash because HTML/JS is such a shit and inefficient way to access information. You could put a quantum computer in the phone and it still won't be as responsive as a native app using a fraction of the resources.