Yes, there is no ideal phone for anyone. Or for very very few people. You can try to balance things out. I for my part am happier, when I’m a little unhappy about some aspects of a phone, that did only cost me $200. And while it is sometimes useful to have internet to go in your pocket, I don’t really use it as a multimedia platform, for gaming or other demanding stuff. So why pay for it? Different people use their phones in different ways and buy different phones. That’s why there is a market.
It might also be a smart choice (for some people) to buy a phone, that costed $1000 a few years ago. The specs might be similar to a budget pone in many regards, but I guess the investment into developing a flagship phone is higher. Pictures and sound might be better, power consumption more optimized and so on.
And yeah, a brand-new flagship phone can be a damn nice piece of technic you just want to own for… reasons. I’m not immune to that. I tried it out and might do so again at some point.
But as you can’t expect to find a phone, that meets your demand in every single feature, you can’t conclude that a sold phone is a vote, that every single design decision was the right one in the buyers opinion. And you can’t expect every buyer to know, how to rate design decisions.