Except for the USB-C port, where Lightning is definitely an annoyance – if bang for the buck is the primary criteria, you can buy an iPhone that’s several generations old (even all the way back to the iPhone 11) and it still blows every Android device ever made (!) out of the water in terms of performance. Used iPhones are your best value on a bang for the buck basis… it’s not even close.
Plus, Apple themselves continue to sell the 12 and 13 at lower prices as their “value” offerings, and you don’t give up much other than incremental camera improvements.
It’s just such an awful shame that Android effectively only has Qualcomm for SOCs. I’m very glad Google has finally woken up and is making their own SOCs at last, but … we’ll see. Samsung’s own SOCs have been marginal at best: