The camera should be better. But, what midrange smartphones still provide a headphone Jack? I have all but seen it disappear alongside fading sdcard support.
Their new models are expensive but if you get the last year's or 2 years old model it's a lot cheaper. The differences between years are minimal anyway because they already put everything you could want in them. They mostly just switch to newer components.
Samsung midrangers like the A15 / M15 / A25 etc have both the jack as well as an sdcard slot. There's also the Motorola G34 and the G84. And finally, there's also a flagship - the ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro. And a whole bunch of Chinese phones which I won't bother mentioning.
You're right, I haven't looked at mid prices phones in a bit. They used to have headphone jacks when the flagships didn't. But that could have changed since the Pixel 3A days.
I wouldn't define the A series as "budget", but yes - the cameras are very good for the price. I briefly used a 7a last year and the only other phone I've seen that was comparable in that price range was the A54.
Oh, you're right, it's more of a mid price phone. The budget phones market has continued to expand. But the budget ones are definitely slower than the A series.
The chip is the obvious problem here. Samsung's manufacturing is thermally inferior to something like snapdragon. Let's see what 2025 pixel can do after switching to tsmc.