Buy A flagship device, the choice has served me well over the years compared to when I used a mid-range/entree android phone.
So far have used Samsung S8 (Exynos), s20(snapdragon).
If you buy a phone from a top-tier manufacturer with a Snapdragon processor, it will not disappoint you. But in Samsung's case never buy an Exynos flagship.
Samsung used to provide 2 major Android OS updates accounting for 3 years from release but now they have extended it to 3, which means you'd be okay for 4+ years since the release with 3 Major OS updates.
But from what I have seen, Iphone is like a toyota, always there'd be some 'hawa' waiting to buy it for a premium compared to an android of the same generation.
Further, if you are a power user, Flagships have refined and optimized hardware and software. For an example, I was travelling with some friends sometime back and at the airport, everybody who had 2.4GHz wifi had a hard time using wifi, while the flagship owners who had wifi 5GHz were able to make use of 5GHz AP seamlessly. Also, apps are explicitly optimized for these models since they are more or less globally released phones, unlike some entree/midrange phones which are designed for a specific limited market.
At the end of the day, buy something you can really afford to lose. Undoubtedly the iPhones have set the bar for price of mobile phones so high and have caused the hike in android too IMO. It takes only a minute to lose/destroy a phone, doesn't matter whether it's a flagship nor iPhone nor, etc.
Good Luck.