As a ~normal person who uses their phone at least 4 hours per day, it's the single most important tech device in my life. I enjoy getting the best thing out there every upgrade cycle (2 years). The progress feels incremental, but going back and using an n-1 gen phone reminds me how much slower things were. All of those extra half-second waits between interactions add up, and I enjoy having a quality camera with me wherever I go. There are also things like phone speaker quality that while hard to objectively measure and promote, have really improved over the years to the point where I don't hate doing things like watching educational or fun YouTube videos in bed in the morning.
Are you sure those half-second lags were there when it was new, or it’s just software becoming more inefficjent as usual, as newer models set a new performance baseline?
I don’t think any of the apps truly make an iphone from the last 4-5 years sweat at all - I would even question the “lag” parent commenter claims. It’s just probably a psychological effect of the new being better + promotion does make everything appear smoother.