Flagship phones cross another price threshold every autumn, and every autumn the argument for buying one gets a little thinner. Not because the flagships got worse — because everything below them got so much better.
The gap closed from below
The features that justified the premium — a screen that looks great, a camera that handles a dim restaurant, a battery that lasts the day, software that stays smooth for years — are no longer premium features. They are table stakes, and they arrived in the middle of the market a couple of years ago.
What is left at the top is genuine but marginal: the last ten percent of camera versatility, a slightly brighter panel, a chip faster than anything you will ask of it. Real improvements, sold at a price that assumes you cannot tell the difference. Increasingly, you cannot.
The best phone for most people has quietly become the boring one in the middle.
None of this is a knock on the flagships. It is a sign the whole market grew up. When the affordable phone is genuinely good, paying triple for the last increment stops being aspirational and starts being a question worth asking out loud.