As a smartphone power user, I naturally tend to gravitate towards picking a flagship as my daily driver. High-end smartphones offer displays that compete with the best TVs, excellent camera systems, and enough processing power to play console-quality games — what’s not to like? But even though I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the company of my Pixel 8 Pro over the past year, I’ve come to realize that there are many scenarios where owning a flagship smartphone just doesn’t make sense.
Carrying two phones was once the hallmark of business executives juggling work and personal lives — BlackBerry in one pocket and a fashionable personal phone in the other. While that may no longer be true these days, I still think there’s a case to be made for owning a phone that’s inexpensive, reliable, and versatile enough to handle situations where taking out a thousand-dollar flagship feels like overkill or downright risky.