Due to UK regulations, Apple has confirmed the period for which the company will provide an update for the iPhone15. 

Companies like Google and Samsung are pretty open about how much upgrades and security patches will appear on their smartphones, but Apple has historically not come that close. That said, you can find evidence that Apple is updating the phone well beyond the alleged timeline of other companies. 

When the new UK regulations came into force at the end of March 4, Apple was forced to officially detail the iPhone's minimum support life, as reported by the android Authority. For current phones, it's surprisingly less than Apple's 2 biggest competitors. 

The UK's Product and Security Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) introduced the mandates of the PSTI Act 2022 and 2023 last year. These came into force in 2024/4/29. The regulations are designed to improve the security of consumer devices that can connect to the Internet, like the iPhone. 

Apple recently released a compliance statement for the iPhone15Pro Max. The defined support period is at least 5 years from the first supply date. According to Apple's statement, that date began in 2023/9/22, when the iPhone15 line-up was launched.

In the case of PSTI, the support period is the minimum time that a company provides security updates. The regulatory department defines security updates as "software updates that protect or enhance the security of a product." Therefore, Apple has confirmed that the iPhone15Pro Max will receive a minimum of 5 years of security updates, less than what its competitors currently offer.

To be fair to Apple, Google's security update policy has only recently increased to 8 years with the launch of the Pixel7 line-up. Until 2021, the company offered only 3 years of renewal. With the launch of the Pixel6 series, the company beat it in up to 5 years.

For many years, Samsung has long been offering up to 5 years of patches. Like Google, Samsung pushed that number to 24 with the release of its Galaxy S7 phone. 

Apple is known to update the phone for up to 5 years, but as mentioned, it has never been officially confirmed so far.

I'm sure companies like Apple and Samsung are funding people who upgrade fairly regularly. In a consumer survey last year, about 12% of mobile phone users are upgraded each year. Buy a new phone every six months close to 5%.

The same study says that most mobile phone users (55.47%) upgrade their phones every 2 to 3 years. They, however, did not elaborate on how many people have upgraded at the five or seven-year mark.