They clearly understand that phones are now our digital lifelines, not a place to be playing around with weird features.

Apple doesn’t sell a slow phone, even for $399. People complain about Apple’s high prices but the real “secret” is that Apple’s previous generation phones that they continue to sell new are an excellent value.

Their manufacturing is basically perfect. Since the 8/X especially I haven’t heard of any persistent hardware flaw and even before then there was not much to write home about.

You don’t have to wonder when the next iPhone will come out or what it will be like.

iOS never changes based on what phone you have besides minor necessary differences between notch and non-notch phones. I once had to ship my my phone to be repaired, and I was able to restore my exact setup and all data to my backup iPhone 6S. Not only did it work flawlessly, the 6S was still surprisingly fast.

Overall, you really can’t get a phone that lasts longer. Even iPhones that don’t get iOS 14 are still getting security patches. You could feel pretty decently about connecting an iPhone 5S with iOS 12 to a network. Yep, an 8 year old phone - I am positive there are tens of thousands of people still daily driving that phone.