It's been a while since they made a bold choice. When I bought an iPhone a couple years ago, even the apple store employee kinda shrugged his shoulders when I asked if the new 14 phone was better, besides the camera, than the cheaper 13.
If you live west of the great plains, you will always hit dead zones if you ever leave the city, even on the major interstates you will hit dead zones. This is an incredibly nice feature to have for tens (hundreds?) of millions of people in the just the US, let alone other countries. (this may hold true in the east as well, I don't live there)
Extrapolating your personal experience to all use cases is generally a bad idea.
This is me when I go to a state forest 20 minutes away, and about 2.5hrs drive from Manhattan. Anywhere with even a little elevation has abundant cell dead zones.
I bought a 13 Pro Max on launch day and I am still using it today. I have never kept a phone this long in my life. The cameras and performance are still fantastic. The only thing that would be nice is USB-C and USB 3.0 transfer speeds. But that is not enough for me to upgrade.
