Bose stopped selling the original QC2 in what, 2009, ~8-9 years ago. I know a couple people still using them. The ear pads need replacing occasionally but the rest of the kit seems pretty durable.

"Better displays" are both somewhat subjective, and for most people kind of an irrelevance when $200 phones got to "good enough" a couple of years ago. Most of the $100-ish phones still have objectively worse displays, but that's starting to change. Some of the trends towards "better" actively make the phones worse for some people (trend towards ever bigger phones -- which I like -- doesn't fit everyone's pockets or hands, absurdly high resolution hurting battery life and performance, bezel-less phones one can't actually hold the same way one , the silly "notch" breaking older software)

]"Better processors" was a much bigger deal a few years ago; the newest $100 phones have quad cores these days, and for typical use many people won't notice the difference.

A new $200 phone will have a better modem than a two year old iPhone. Probably than last year's iPhone.

Better cameras is indisputable -- and most sub-$200 budget phones still have genuinely crap cameras -- although even there, a newer mid-range phone will have a better camera than a two year old iPhone. And at least on midrange phones, "good enough" that many people don't care has hit in the past couple of years.

"Better design" is entirely subjective, and not everyone is impressed with the super-fragile glass that has taken over both Apple and Samsung flagship design. Heck, judging by the number of iPhone and Galaxy owners I know who immediately stuff the phone in a bulky plastic case, it's pretty clear that's an awful lot of iPhone and Samsung owners.

At least on the Android side, new midrange phones come out enough faster that they often have more RAM and bigger processors than the still-top-of-the-line flagship phones which Samsung only updates once a year. Moreover, while 6GB and even 8GB RAM has been available in phones for about 18 months now, most people aren't anywhere near enough power users to care about the difference between 3-4GB and over.

Not to mention that on more budget phones you can often get features that have disappeared on flagships, like interchangeable batteries and SD card slots for expandable memory, or dual-SIM here in the US (although it's not unknown in non-US model flagships.)

There's a continuum, from the $40 subsidized budget phones, to absurdities like the iPhone X. There's no one value proposition that will be best for everyone. For me, as I've said up-thread, midrange Android phones have offered the best value for some time, but that isn't intended to say that they're going to be the best value for everyone or even necessarily anyone else.