But do you want to be spending so much time on your phone?

To me, buying an expensive phone is somewhat like buying an expensive tobacco pipe. It will just encourage you to use it more. When in fact, most of the 'use' is worse than useless.

$180 is about how much a phone should cost, and even that is too much what with forced (completely unjustified) obsolescence. $450 for a 'budget' phone is madness. $1000+ for a flagship is insanity. Unless you have a specific, legitimate need for it - most people don't.

Sounds like we should both have the phones we have :)

Exactly. Contrary to popular belief no one became poor by buying Starbucks or iPhones. For most folks their biggest financial blunders are likely always about real estate, marital, or career related not your petty cash spending habits.

In the US maybe, but there are many countries where housing or services are much cheaper, while iPhones cost the same.

In the poorer regions of my reasonably modern European country, getting even the base model of every iPhone generation would put significant stress on most families' finances, but it's what some folks actually do because it's such a status symbol.