You can still buy a decent budget android phone that meets most of your requirements for only a few hundred dollars. The Samsung Galaxy M56 5G is only $400. The pixel 9a is only $499. Android probably has something that you are looking for, Apple isn't really competing in that space.

Most of my circle seems to like that crap. You can opt out, all of the carriers have prepaid offerings with much lower rates and a lot less financing. Maybe you get less data priority, almost certainly you get a lower tier of customer service, but those are ok tradeoffs for me. If you want to save more money, you can go to former MVNOs now owned by the carrier they run on or actually independent MVNOs. https://prepaidcompare.net/ seems like a good place to compare plans. They also have deals listings if you want to have fun with subsidy locked phones.

The 2 year contracts from the 2000s and early 2010s are back with a vengeance.

What's the concern here? Can the phone not just be bought outright?

Mind walking through what you saw that helped you make the decision?

Congratulations, good to know.

iPhone 16 Pro owner will not be upgrading because there's no value in it.