Hi.
With Samsung I always ask People to give their Ultra phone a try.
You could get the S25 ultra for a decent price with trade-in.
Ideally preorder time is the best.
There still some good offers to have.
For your Question on the phone feeling sluggish after update.
1. Try A Phone 'Wipe Cache' look up videos on YouTube on how to do it.
2. My personal Favourite is to Factory Reset my phone after each major OS update and start from scratch with manually adding apps as and when needed and setup as new.
Rest I recover from backup like photos etc ( Good to have an online backup like Google One or/and MS onedrive ).
The above has my phones running as good as new.
😊
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