If you think you know how bad one teen can get, try dealing with classrooms of them, for over a decade.

At that age in their development, their brains start sloughing off cells that it thinks it doesn’t need, so they go out and do stupid shit no matter what you try to tell them. They’re basically learning more from serious fuckups than anything else because those are the lessons that stick.

At that age you’ve just got to compromise. In this case, I’d say tell them they can get whatever phone they want as long as they pay for it themselves and hear out your concerns. If you’re the one buying, tell them tough shit, they get what they get, or make them write you an essay of why they think they deserve a one kind of phone over the one you think they ought to have. It gives you an opportunity to hear them out completely, call out bs, share some personal insight, or maybe even reconsider your own stance on the issue.