Only 5 years ago? I feel like they stopped getting interesting and started getting increasingly worse like 5 years in. I'm still pissed off about the headphone jack.
5s/SE1 is still peak iPhone for me. I pull that thing out of the drawer every now and then and just marvel and the size and weight and how it is barely noticeable in my pocket even compared to my (ginormous in comparison) SE2.
Whenever the 12 mini came out, that was the last new phone I bought, and it still works great, although I prefer to use Graphene than iOS.