No idea what a general profile of such people is, but I generally buy my wife a new top model every 3-4 years. She couldn't care less about status and neither do I, who inherits them afterwards :) This way the phone is used for 5+ years and makes lost initial "saving" meaningless.

I had cheaper phones before but saving a couple hundred euros in exchange for a couple of years of annoyance is not worth it to me. This way I know she gets currently top experience and I, when I get her phone, get a very well understood one.

On the high end phones, there's usually a pretty good resale value. So even though the phone might cost $800, in two years it's probably still going to be worth $300.

In the next week or two I am upgrading my phone and I think I'm going to buy my first iPhone. The only other phone I would consider is one from Google. Because they do such a crappy job with security, I'll never again consider an LG, Samsung, or other third party phone. Apple or Google for me.

Moto G5+ is an awesome budget phone (especially the version with more memory). 90% as good as the flagships for less than half the cost. Also, I quite like Motorola's version of Android. Very minimal with a few very useful features. The double chop motion for the flashlight is ingenious.

Caveat: If you care about a lot about the best possible photo quality, then it probably isn't the right choice. I found it to be good enough for my needs.

"the kind of person who spends 800 - 1000 on a phone also upgrades it every year or two"

Nope, I don't mind how much my phone costs since I use it daily, but I will use it until some component fails in a terminal way. I had a Note 3, swapped its display module once, but it finally died. It lasted maybe three or four years.

> but I will use it until some component fails in a terminal way

This is what I told myself too, but I also upgraded after 3-4 years after being annoyed at just how slow my phone was (or to put it another way, just how much CPU power apps demanded now). The phone still works perfectly fine, it just slows down to a crawl right when you're in the biggest hurry. (e.g. at one point Google Maps took multiple minutes to refresh the screen right when I was driving and trying to figure out the right directions, and I still haven't been able to reproduce it, but I sure as heck don't want to live through that experience again.)

With the iPhone having 40-50% market share in the US, I doubt anyone sees it as a status symbol. Besides, every major carrier has some sort of monthly lease or 0% interest plan. It’s not that hard to get an $800 phone affordability.

You're probably right for the US, but it's definitely a status symbol in the EU which is a bigger market than the US.

I'd say in Europe people try to resell them for high price (looking at eBay DE), but given so many of them are there stuck at the same price for months, I don't think their resale value is actually that high.

I but a top of the line iPhone every year. I get a tax discount of half of it because I use it for development, then I sell it at the next year and make the rest back.