Old Flagships Are Awesome.

Marketing. It's always marketing that drives FOMO.

Perhaps it's marketing. Sometimes it is just pricing. People want to feel like they got a good deal. Newer phones often come with additional discounts that might make a newer baseline model cost much less than the previous generation's top of the line model.

Separately, many users have no use or need for a top tier model. Most casual users might get 100% of the functionality they need from a $300 phone, and they actually have no legitimate need for a $900 phone, but if course all the $900 phone users want to ustify their purchase and therefore claim that anything less is just a waste.

Different generations of users, use their phones very differently. Older users make more phone calls, but take less photos. Younger users are more likely to do photo and video editing in their phone. Older users use different social media platforms and consume less media on their phones, such as less music or video streaming. Older users might place greater value on lower cost and more longevity, meaning they upgrade less frequently and take better care of their device, even if that just means using a thicker more durable case, while a younger user would rather have a slim and slick looking phone with a broken screen, than make it bulky by using a more protective case.

Partly because of marketing and partly because a new phone is a new phone (I don't mean just end of support). I've come across surprisingly many people who have replaced their OnePlus 9(Pro) or 10(Pro) with the OP Nord line (3 or 4).

If my LG G7 from 2018 didn't brick after many years of complete abuse, I'd still be using it. It was better than any phone I'd had or any phone I've used since. The closest thing was Pixel 8a but the AI in those things is annoying and constantly doing weird things. And it gets hot.

The camera on the LG G7 is insanely good. I got the best pictures and video from this camera. LG nailed it and now they don't even make phones. This is upside down world.

Hey phone makers, LG nailed it about 7 yrs ago. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

It is ego. Everybody wants the biggest and the best. I agree 100% with your comment!

It's the LG V20 for me. That phone was almost perfect, and pretty much would've been if the wireless charging case option hadn't been canceled. Makes me feel guilty I abandoned LG for a gaming phone, albeit a badass one. Except now the newer gaming phones are barely any different from mainstream flagships.

I'd buy an LG v20 with updated specs in a heartbeat, and while wireless charging would be awesome it wouldn't even be necessary for me. I don't know why startups like Nothing Phone completely ignore the things people miss from yesteryear's phones.

well its a new phone and people want to feel like they have the latest thing even if it isnt the greatest. oh and also OS updates

Ego? If it was EGO they'd be buying the old flagship, which has more bragging rights than.a midrange phone. This question isn't about buying an S25 instead of an S23, it's about buying an A56. There's no ego boost in buying a phone like that.

I have an A53. I bought it three years ago because, at the time, I had to pay the full cost of the phone myself, up front (no lease options, this was during the Sprint » T-Mobile migration), and Best Buy had It on sale for $350. You couldn't buy even a used S21 for that price, then. And the S23 was over $1000.

Plus, buying even a lower-end new phone, you get the support that old flagships no longer have. My phone started with Android 13 (maybe even 12?), but it's now running Android 15. Samsung supports 2 years of major release upgrades for all of their Galaxy phones, though of course the S series get them first.

I went from a leased, refurb Note 8 to the A53. It was a bit of a downgrade, but the Note 8 was past its useful life and dying. The A53 was by far the best phone I could get for what I could afford, much more than an old flagship model.

Plus, the A53 has been a great phone. I'm still using it, and it still works just fine.. Battery life is starting to fall off, but that's the only issue.

Some of us like getting a deal, and want the latest-greatest phone because they want the features it offers. As an example, we traded in our old S21U's during the S25 pre-launch period, as they were offering 2.5x the trade value vs just a month before ($500 vs $200), which allowed us to stay with the Ultra variant for the same price as the base model S25. Pretty sweet deal, and my wife's phone was experiencing charging issues, so it was time to upgrade after 4 yrs.

Why do we get the Ultras vs the Base model or the Plus? Because I'm a semi-pro photographer, and I want any photo that I take to be as high-quality as my equipment will allow. My parents got the base model S25's, and we've done side-by-side and the Ultra's cameras annihilate the Base's pic quality, even in basic Auto mode. That matters to me.

I'm also a desktop PC enthusiast, and can't tolerate slow, laggy hardware implementations and poor screens. I want my phone to be as snappy and multitasking-capable as my desktop (as close as reasonably possible).

Ego has nothing to do with it, my good fellow human. It's not polite to generalize and stereotype others like that. ; )