The opening line gives a hint:

Android phones are never the top-selling smartphones globally, but the ones that get closest are almost always budget models.

The "first" is that a premium phone is the top selling Android phone, whereas usually it's a budget phone.

I just recently replaced my Samsung S10 with a Pixel 8 after about 7 years. I gotta say, it was a pretty good phone. It actually still worked okay when I replaced it, the battery life has just gotten bad enough that it rarely lasts a day which is frustrating to use. Also, I didn't realise it at the time but some of Samsung's stock apps are very good compared to stock Pixel. I don't mean the obviously Samsung branded stuff, but like, the launcher and the clock app had certain features I just assumed were standard on Android but haven't been able to find since.

Samsung have their problems for sure but they can make a good phone.

For those categories, it's gotta be Fairphone. Definitely wins in the ethics and repairability categories, and with /e/ I think it would be a decent contender in the privacy bracket.

A second hand Pixel with GrapheneOS might also be a contender. I think buying second hand is a decent ethical choice and GrapheneOS is probably as good as it gets for privacy. Not very repairable though.

There are probably many reasons, but I think there are two ones worth mentioning (aside from money, which everyone else has mentioned so I won't bother).

First, pretty much everyone is online now. The real greybeards of the internet talk about Eternal September which is when the internet first began to reach a larger audience in the early 90s. IMO the same thing happened (on a much bigger scale) with the advent of smartphones. The difference in scale between mid 2000s and now is difficult to imagine. And I just don't think you can have a cohesive culture across such a vast set of people.

The second (related) reason is that you are a lot older now than you were back then. Most of us who grew up in that period just don't have the same interest in memes as we used to. I presume younger people do have their own memes but (i) they are less likely to pop up on the websites I browse, (ii) when they do, they don't interest me, and (iii) because there is so much more content out there now, each individual meme is probably shorter lived.

My experience is that Lemmy is decent for tech-related stuff but outside of that, it can be difficult to find active communities depending on the hobby. I just went looking for a good Spanish learning or general language learning community and the few that I found have been inactive for months. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place (I searched in Communities > All).

I don't think maximum growth should be a goal for Lemmy, I just think it needs a critical mass of activity to keep it interesting. Currently I think we just about have that for many tech/FOSS related topics but not so much outside it. The problem, I think, is that a lot of people who aren't into tech/FOSS issues don't know about Lemmy and don't see why they wouldn't just use Reddit or Discord.

And for all that it doesn't even make sense. Was the car stopped or was it pulling away?

Where is this/ what app do you use?

Why do you think everyone is using the term is wrong? Plenty of words get overused until they become meaningless but I have mainly seen enshittification used to refer to large companies significantly degrading their product in a bid to increase profits which is what I understand it to mean. If it's used a lot, it's because it's happening a lot (often by companies who built their products in the zero interest rate, infinite money era and now have to face the new reality).

Irish and French. Irish was mandatory, French technically wasn't but most (all?) universities required (require?) a passing grade in at least one foreign language regardless of the course. Anecdotally in Ireland most schools offered French or German as a foreign language.

Granted this was all many years ago so the system may have changed since.

Anecdotally my Garmin's stress monitor seems to just be a hangover monitor.