Im there with you, my wife as well as myself are in fact like your girlfriend and I work an highly educated software engineering role. I simply don’t care, still on my iPhone 11 Pro Max which I got as a present from my parents at the time.

I think battery power drain is even not fast enough for phone companies to sustain the selling Model. My guess is sooner or later they realize the real control point is software updates and they forcefully shorten OS and specially OS security updates under a bullshit reason they still can get away with to get us all back in line of buying regular phone upgrades in fear of hacked internet banking.