Companies don't backwardly support old phones so they can ship new ones. Planned obsolescence.
However, Apple rightly foster "brand loyalty" (awful phrase), by doing exactly the opposite. And with the knowledge that people sell phones second hand, thus increasing Apple's market share, and future customers.
It sounds like Samsung could learn a lesson or two.
A phone does have a shelf life though (4g, 5g...), but it's not as short as these companies would like you to believe.
UMTS (3G) is still up and running in many locations, sometimes HSDPA (3.5G) is faster than congested/low signal LTE and it still is totally adequate even for video streaming.
Those are early 2000's technologies which telcos are upgrading from to increase subscriber density, but on the customer optics, they are mostly equivalent to 4G.
However, Apple rightly foster "brand loyalty" (awful phrase), by doing exactly the opposite. And with the knowledge that people sell phones second hand, thus increasing Apple's market share, and future customers.
It sounds like Samsung could learn a lesson or two.
A phone does have a shelf life though (4g, 5g...), but it's not as short as these companies would like you to believe.