Yep. I'm still using my galaxy s2. Had to replace the back twice and the battery once. Bought it in 2013. Total I've paid for my phone is about $50 over the last 3 years. It's really crazy how many people have been tricked into thinking they absolutely need to pay hundreds every year or 2 and that they need to pay dozens of dollars per month for service. Absolute racket.
Unfortunately, the software and to some extent the network assumes frequent upgrades.
Despite having a relatively newish s4, the number of apps that simply won't work with my phone is astonishing. And once I passed the 2-year point of ownership, the number of network glitches has noticeably increased (dropped calls, messages taking hours to go through, loss of 4G for hours for no apparent reason).
I wouldn't be surprised if some of these glitches are intentional.
Have you updated that phone regularly? I have one for testing here, and it's become so slow, I don't even know how one could use it every day... Even if they bring back removable batteries, software updates will take care of the deprecation. Just look at an iPad 2 with iOS9 today...
