iPhone 12 wasn't low end

The same applies at the low end, the grand parent comment even agrees.

You buy a new phone every two years, it comes with a camera, a cpu, a gpu, a host of sensors. Same as phones did two years ago, and ten years before that.

I don’t use my current smart phone in any ways that are different to the iMate PDA2K I had twenty years so.

https://www.gsmarena.com/i_mate_pda2k-962.php