I can only add the obvious information, which I said a few years ago, and cannot be argued against
Take ANY technology curve.
You start low, and as years pass the tech/spec/speed ramps up fast, until you get to a point where the curve starts to flatten out.
It's simply not possible to maintain the curve/advancement in later years than you had in the early years.
Apple are in those later years. The cheap phones are still using some/many items from the earlier years.
The cheaper phones will, without any question advance up this curve faster than Apple can move away from them.
That's not to say Apple can't stay in front, or at the front, but they cannot maintain the gap that used to be.
As every year passes this gap has, is and will continue to close.
The individual components that make up a phone, will become easier to make at the higher quality, and for a lower price point. So that you can/will be able to build a phone for much less with every and every "Nearer to the best" components.
This is simply a fact.
Imagine showing someone the cheapest Chinese clone/phone you can buy today, alongside the launch of the iPhone 1 or 2.
The iPhone would be dead in the water in every single specification.
That's where we are now.
This will only continue, and it's going, inevitably to get to the point where the mass of people are going to more and more question the costs of the expensive devices, other than the strong core brand followers.
The only real place I can see for phones to go now is:
1: Power increases to the point you can dock a iPhone into a monitor and it run MacOS, but Apple would never want that.
2: Foldable phones, to allow people to have a phone and tablet in one device.
Apple I think will do this, but they will be years behind others, and probably do it very well, when finally do do it.
Next future I feel is not going to be phones, it's going to be AR glasses, but we are a long long LONG way away from such a future device being of a practical quality to be sold to the mass market.
Perhaps in 20 years time we'll all have them?