They've always done this "product spam", and it's really annoying.
"Sorry, you can't have a phone with everything, you've got to choose a feature to sacrifice."
Even five years ago: This one is missing stereo audio but is otherwise great! This one doesn't do 3G but the audio is amazing! This one takes amazing pictures but runs series 40!
Which is all fine and dandy when you're king of the hill and nobody can touch you, but when the likes of Apple come along and put the very best they can do all into one model and absolutely wipe the floor, you really can't stick with purposefully hobbling your devices in subtle ways just to try to guarantee an upgrade path.
Plus if they didn't do feature spam, they could have only a few models, updated ~yearly and get decent consumer recognition and hype.
Cheap one, small one, one with a keyboard, high-end one. Done.

Hmm, that was a bit rambley