Re: "palatable $520"?
I earn a pretty good wage, and probably could afford to spend £500 on a phone every year, but I've yet to find a tangible difference between a £100 phone and one five times that price (except that the cheaper ones are more likely to have things like a headphone port, and an SD card slot).
So I'll be sticking to my £100 phone with LTE. If I need more speed I'll just jump on the nearest wifi network, because in a big city (ie the only places getting 5G for the foreseeable future), there's a free wifi network within range most of the time.