You're not getting a mid-tier anything for $120 in the RAMpocalypse era. That price point comes with a lot of compromises, the OP's implication that it's even close to "90%" of a $2k phone is laughable.
On the Android side, for true flagship performance we're talking something like $900 for a Pixel 11. Once you start getting into the real bargain territory (like the Samsung A17 5G), yeah, it's $270, but it starts at 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. Then if for some ungodly reason you absolutely can't spend the extra $70 for the Samsung, there's the Motorola Moto G Play 2026, which compromises on the storage (there's only 64GB) and has a truly awful 720P display.
Ironically, through a quirk of carrier subsidies one of the better bang-for-your-buck values at the moment actually is an iPhone. Metro has the 16e for a total of $160 if you port over a number from a competitor (which can be a burner number) and prepay for the first month of service. Let it sit in a drawer for a year and it will still automatically unlock (Metro's unlock policy is weird like that). Chances are, even after a year of waiting for it to unlock, it will still perform better than anything else you could buy for $160.