Don't Skip the Flagship; Why Top-Class Smartphones Are Still Worth Your Money

howtogeek.com:

While mid-range smartphones are now so good, they can do most of what flagship phones do well enough for most people, there are still many solid reasons why you'd want a flagship model.

While my colleague Ismar Hrnjicevic argued convincingly that you should skip flagship phones, as a stalwart flagship phone fanatic myself, I think it's too soon to completely discount these mobile titans. Here's why.

Flagships Are the Best Choice for Infrequent Upgraders

If you buy a flagship phone today, you will have no reason to buy a new flagship phone for half a decade or more. As long as the software support commitment from your phone maker is long enough, your phone will be usable and relevant likely until its last security update ships.

This means you can buy a phone cash or pay it off over a two-year contract, and then switch to a SIM-only plan or stick with prepaid for years more after that. You can put a small fraction of what would have been your handset installment towards insuring your flagship phone instead, in case you drop it or it's stolen.

Camera Quality Matters More Than Ever

While the cameras you'll find on mid-range and even budget phones are certainly good enough for most people, there's still an obvious and meaningful gap in photo and video quality compared to flagship phones. If you don't really care about photos or video, then perhaps flagship phones won't make much sense from this point of view, but we live in a growing visual content world.

Whether you're making memories, taking photos for work, creating content for social media, or anything else that requires a camera, you'll be glad to have the best shooter of the day in your pocket. It's not just about hardware either, manufacturers tend to put their best software tricks into their flagship phones first, and then let it trickle down to cheaper handsets. In some cases, lower-end phones won't have the processing power to pull some of these features off for years, and you'll get to have them