Agreed.
Everyone saying they’d give a smartphone at best under best behaviour at age >16 are very suspect to me.
I would bet a solid 100€ they werent perfect kids to their parents either and worked around restrictions or talked long enough to be convincing or their lives were so long ago that they only remember a time with land lines and mobile calls costing 9ct per minute.
Getting a phone this late is socially crippling them.

IMO late middle school is a good starting age while giving them guidance.

At all users: Take it with a grain of salt. This is coming from someone without children but as someone that has been in school during the late 2000s and early 2010s