Couldn’t agree more the bloated and exaggerated price of phone nowadays. I was pointing myself silly when I bought my iPhone 6 for more then 2k years ago. Looking at phone nowadays 3-6k which no one would have imagine a couple of years back for a just a hand phone. Most will have to take loan/installment plan just to afford to get it while the well off can just pay off easily. The surprise part is these phone still sell and very well too. So there is market demand for premium and expect much more expensive phone in future not only Apple.

For TS hope you can make the switch, I tried moving from PC windows base to Apple MacBook before, I gave up after a week and switch back to pc. I had been using windows for years, just not familiar or get use to Apple ecosystem. But for IPhone and Android I had no problem, much simpler on the phones.