I'd never buy an iPhone because of Apple's practices, but it does make sense. Spending $500 on a phone that gets updates for five years is almost impossible to do in many Android ecosystems. Samsung has been getting a lot better the past two years, but even two or three years ago you had to buy Apple if you wanted an update guarantee of more than "two major upgrades, eventually, and security updates, sometimes". If you care about security updates, you would've had to buy a new phone right in the middle of the support period of iPhones that will soon be abandoned.
On the other hand, almost nobody I know outside the tech sphere gives a crap about security updates. OnePlus is a very popular brand with an atrocious update policy, but it delivers much better value than something like an iPhone. Xiaomi is also getting very competitive in this market, often ignoring or rescinding their software update promises but handing you an excellent phone for super cheap. The cheaper iPhone models also offer this, but often with weirdly outdated designs and comparatively inferior screens.
On the other hand, almost nobody I know outside the tech sphere gives a crap about security updates. OnePlus is a very popular brand with an atrocious update policy, but it delivers much better value than something like an iPhone. Xiaomi is also getting very competitive in this market, often ignoring or rescinding their software update promises but handing you an excellent phone for super cheap. The cheaper iPhone models also offer this, but often with weirdly outdated designs and comparatively inferior screens.