I've used iOS devices of one kind or another since around the 2nd and 3rd generations, and seen some of those devices through years of major updates. Anecdotally, I have never seen things as bad as they have been in the past couple of years, other than Apple's seemingly arbitrary policy on abandoning support for older (but not necessarily old by most standards) devices entirely.

The really sad thing is that iOS devices still seem to be relatively robust compared to either Windows 10 or macOS on the desktop. It feels like Apple and Microsoft have both decided they are so dominant now that quality control doesn't need to be a business priority, and as a result we've left behind the "golden age" up to the mid-2010s when your OS mostly Just Worked(TM) and entered a new age where the most basic reliability of our essential IT systems is in question.