What a great post. Makes me sad though to see the end of a tradition like that! I follow a similar path as you every year, except this year did not pre-sell my 7 plus. I went through a bit of 7 Plus disappointment with the Video hiss issue and speaker quality issue and missed the headphone jack, so went back to a 6s Plus for a few months and have recently re-acquired a 7 Plus. So it’s not so old to me yet.
Most of your points are valid kind of, but 1) get over the notch issue and 2) stay involved in the annual cycle! I know the SE is a great phone blah, blah, blah, but come on! This is an Annual Tradition! Who knows how long this will last?? You want to bail on it now?
Just imagine, you’re at a coffee shop with a friend and you see someone with a super cool looking phone and the person you’re with asks you “what phone is that?” And you have to answer “I don’t know”! Do you really want to be the person that is out of the loop?
This is game changing stuff, as Tim Cook said, this will set the groundwork for phones / devices for the next decade, and you want to take a pass?!
Sure, there will be plenty of arrows to take, we are all guinea pigs in this experiment round 1, but really, isn’t that part of the experience?
So you have the notch (get over it) the price (so the resell will be higher in year which means no real / minimal net price difference to you) no touch ID (this is huge, but this IS the game changer). Given this, I expect to see you in the pre-order group come 10/27...