It might just be your “bubble”, but even if not, is it really that bad of a deal? If you resell your previous phone at 2/3 the original price each year, you can use the latest phone for like 200 bucks for a year, or $17 monthly. For a device that is with you 0-24, and is probably the most often used item a typical person owns — they have it on them more often than even their shoes!
Somewhere along the way, you pass a threshold where it's uncool to have a certain version of phone and judging from what you hear about the waste problem with phones, it's above the reasonable moment to get rid of it because it's broken or not usable.
I mean, sure it's a nice lie you can tell to yourself, but in the end, it's not good.
Incentives exist on the part of the person who, being human, definitely want the new shiny thing, regardless of the logic behind it.
They exist for the salesperson, who will get a commission for selling the new shiny thing, regardless of whether this makes the customer's life any better or worse.
They exist for the carrier because the customer is on the hook for 2-3 years of service when they buy the shiny thing.
Finally, they exist for the company that made the phone because they make a profit on the sale price of the shiny thing.
1 year from now if you sell it for 2/3 the price, you get back $720. A year's use cost you $360. About $1 a day. This is very worth it for some but not quite as cheap as $200 a year. This is without factoring in time to sell.
You could trade in but that means you are locked in contract with service provider.
I have a Xiaomi 10 or something I bought in 2020 I paid 279$ for, almost 4 years later it comes at 0.18 and I see like 0 reasons to upgrade.
I admit I'm not the most social (media) person out there, I'm not into connecting my phone into every other device on this planet (as Apple people consistently remind how easily they interoperate their devices), but it does everything great: camera, battery, messaging, games.
To me to see people thinking it's normal to spend so much money for a phone is borderline crazy.
Alternatively, you could buy a second-hand iphone 11/12 pro and use it for 5-6 years easily, with proper software support. That’s what I do, and don’t yet plan on updating - maybe the iphone 16 would be worthy for me.