My phone is from 2019 and already lacks removable battery (but this doesn’t matter in reality) and IR blaster. I regularly look for possible replacement phones and only see, that there is no advancement anymore, except for having more CPU power and maybe a little bit better cameras.

Instead phones are - bigger, though still no more pixels, which means less DPI), - thicker, resulting from more battery power, which I would not need to use if they would integrate better power saving CPU/GPUs – also I don’t play on the phone, - therefore much heavier, - lack headphone jack - lack SD card slot (but the built-in storage is sufficient enough) - are increasingly more bloated with software than cannot be deactivated or removes phone features if done so

And all phones are the same with the same disadvantages. There’s no variaty like e.g. on the car market.

my cheap budget android smart phone has a removable battery micro sd headphone jack, the ads well that a function of what apps i chose to install, firefox with a adblocker and beig selective on my apps a i encounter minimal ads, thrid party apps well i have F-droid open source app repository (and at one point installed the amazon app store on my last phone) all i needed to do was check a box on a system settings menu. the IR blaster i do admit i haven't had on a phone/tablet in year but even in 2014 that wasn't common and my tv's streaming stick has a Bluetooth/WiFi remote app.

surveillance is mostly done a network level so not something my phone can do much about other than use tor enabled apps