The new(er) mid range chipsets indeed are so so nice now. Pretty/fully modern process nodes, battery efficient, still very respectable cores.
Really glad to see we've finally landed at a place where finding an old refurbished flagship is not the only logical choice, where the mid-range has a lot going on for it.
Just wish we had some mainline kernel support, could put Debian on these things! I've had a OnePlus 6T (2018) that supposedly does pretty ok that I've been meaning to try Mobian on, and it felt like for a bit Snapdragons were getting better and better Linux support. But that motion seems to have really tapered off in the last ~2 years?
I had a Moto X4 which was quite cheap for $200 or $250. It did everything perfectly. No discernable lag for any operation. Plenty of storage. Great battery life. I can't imagine "needing" more phone than this.
Unfortunately it reached the end of its (security) updates so I figured it would be unsafe to keep using it since I have banking apps on the phone. Sad.
I paid $200 for a Moto G85 5G with 12GB RAM, 256GB storage last year.
Alternatives in the same range: CMF Phone 1/2 and OnePlus Nord CE4 Lite 5G