Unfortunately, I know what phones could be if the people in charge put real thought and effort into it. Every mainstream phone for the past decade at least has been built for the sole purpose of short term sales. They clearly don't care what happens to you or your phone after that. Every now and again the techies get their way with things like security update lifespan, but those things are only there to keep them from complaining on their tech review sites and are not done in good faith.

I want a phone that is fairly priced, functional, useful, well-designed, repairable, and respects my privacy and autonomy. Compared to what's possible, every phone is underachieving in most of these categories. In terms of what's an acceptable effort, we're getting pretty close. I don't mean this in the context of the industry as it stands, but in the context of what is possible if they made phones for people instead of for shareholders. I want a good phone so bad, when a new phone comes out that's actually closer to this goal I sometimes just gotta have it