You only feel conflicted about this because (I assume) you lived through the phase where smart phones were changing every year and the updates from one phone to the next were regularly pretty ground breaking. People who lived through that era were conditioned to feel that every generation was a massive leap forward and that you were missing out on cool things if you didn't upgrade every year.

That's not the case anymore, but it's a hard feeling to shake, especially when companies are still trying to convince us that it's true because it benefits their top line. The truth is that smart phones are just small computers at this point. Most people don't feel conflicted about not buying a new computer every year and you shouldn't feel that way about smart phones.

At this point the only people who need (I use that term very loosely) a new smart phone every single year are people who see having the most recent version as a status symbol.