There is so much time, effort, and physical waste that is generated by slightly redesigning phones every year purely for the sake of making sales (as opposed to meaningful improvement upon the existing design or introduction of a new hardware feature). Think not only of people upgrading for the sake of it, but all of the cases, screen protectors, and other assorted accessories cast in plastic for previous models that are garbage now.
It would be nice if we could just space these things out to 5 years or so now, because that's probably how long it takes for anything to change enough to justify a new model.
My reasoning was better camera.
I honestly was going to skip upgrading but the camera and some other minor features were enough for me to make the upgrade happen.
I feel if these companies worked together to cut back on the waste of yearly release cycles, there’d be better environmental results. But every year we have a new feature because tech has caught up with demand.
Not sure what the middle ground is.
Yet, can you really look at your old photos and say "my God, those 2017 photos. Could you imagine taking such crappy photos with such a bad phone?" I doubt it. That hasn't been true in more than a decade even for challenging environments like in low light.
They're selling you on a better camera each year because there's basically no useful way to measure its impact anymore aside from in really technical conditions that don't affect anyone practically.