I have a cheap 2014 Motorola Moto G and I have the same "problem". Yes, there are hundreds of modern phones out there which are several times faster and have way better hardware but the Moto G is fast enough for me.

I usually just browse the web, type a few messages in Whatsapp, take a few pictures, ... and the phone does all of this well enough so that I just don't have any reason to invest 500+ Euro in a new phone.

Another bonus is that if I accidentally drop my phone I can just buy a new one (or two) and it will still be cheaper than an iPhone or other similar phones.

Hmm, now i'm kind of out of options. As after Samsung Galaxy note experience, I said I'd never buy Samsung again.

Now I have Nexus 5X, it costs less than half as much as top phones but I think it's actually better, at least for me - clean Android with timely updates, everything is smooth and fast, USB-C, good camera...

It sounds like a minor complaint and I guess it is, but when I'm fumbling around in the dark and I want my flashlight, or when I'm trying to quickly take a picture, I don't want my phone to be unlocked. I just want my damn flashlight or camera, which are easier to access if the phone is locked.

I'm actually considering going back to the 6 instead of the 6s just because I like that little delay in recognizing my fingerprint.

Pre-iPhone, most contracts were one-year, and typical expensive phones cost $3-400 unlocked. Post-iPhone, phone costs go up, so contracts get longer, but now the carriers are in a position where they're treating expensive iPhones the same as the same as less-expensive base-model Androids. Sure, they can make a killing on the less-expensive phones in that model - since the subsidy amount is greater than the cost of the phone - but it gave T-Mobile incentive to ditch the model and pass on some of the savings to budget-conscious consumers.

And ultimately, that's not such a bad thing for the carriers, but it is a bad thing if almost all the phones you sell are on the "more expensive" side, since you're now competing more directly on price.

Second, the carriers are smart enough to realize that even with relatively old phones data usage is still pretty high. The carriers now make their money on metered data so they want to avoid the capital outlay required to subsidize a phone if they don't need to for customers to stay data hogs. T-Mobile provided a real world experiment that likely found attrition to be low enough even with contracts gone that it was worth removing the subsidy.

Tl;dr The carriers are cheap and don't want to lend you money for a new phone when you still pay them a lot to use your old one.

US had a crappy system. TMobile innovated. Even if that innovation was to copy a system from another country, to our market it was an innovation.

I could update my statement to say

"Most innovation in the AMERICAN cell phone market has been through T-Mobile"

Apple can and does generate a steady stream of revenue from existing devices. App Store revenue increased 35 percent year-over-year, and iCloud is also continuing to grow. Apple pay is adding 1 million new users per week. and they just announced the Apple Music has 13 million subscribers.

Apple's services unit is now the company's second largest category during the recent quarter, ahead of Mac and iPad sales

Also the touch-id capabilities are significantly improved.

Also there are ways to disable some of the newer features and reclaim some responsiveness, such as General->Accessibility->Reduce Motion.