The fist iPhones weren’t flagships.

Lol what. Do you know what a flagship is?

brought nothing new

How old are you? This is very obviously complete nonsense to anyone who was around at the time.

Those days never existed. Even the first iPhones were like $500 and that was over a decade ago.

These prices are very high but phones last a lot longer than they used to and are improving a lot slower. I just bought a Pixel 8 for £400 which (accounting for inflation) is about the same price as we used to pay for three old Pixels and even Nexuses.

E.g. the Nexus 4 which was considered “mega cheap” was £279 for the 16GB model, which is £390 in today’s money.

They’re clearly going for price differentiation based on the model year, but you really don’t need the latest model to have an amazing phone any more.