I had the secure enclave in my iPhone 8 fail about 6 months after I bought it. Solution was to spend about half an hour on the phone with Apple while they ran remote diagnostics and then take it to an Apple store 30 minutes drive away. 10 minutes spent with Apple store employee while they ran even more diagnostics resulted in them handing me a replacement phone and I walked out.
The ability to fairly quickly resolve my hardware problem greatly impressed me. I expect I could get a similar level of service with a Samsung device at a non-Samsung retailer, or if I bought the phone originally through a mobile phone operator's storefront and brought it back to the same store for warranty, but there's no promise of that.
For something which is critical to the operation of my life, I have chosen to compromise on some desires and will likely continue to buy iPhones in the future simply because they work fairly well and when they don't I can get it fixed rather easily and with minimal downtime by Apple itself.
I would never give my phone to the support under any circumstances. I just don't trust that they'll handle my data securely and who knows where my phone will land - some subcontractors instead of disposing it could try to refurbish. I've seen cases where someone bought a phone still with someone's data on it.
I look on forums to see what kind of problems people have with a particular phone and if there is nothing serious, then I consider buying it.
If something happens to my phone I destroy it myself and get a new one.
That's a very security minded methodology. But I cannot comfortably afford to throw away a phone which is under warranty when it has a hardware issue.
The Apple store employee made sure to show me they were executing the erase of my phone before I left the table. I had to put in my passcode to initiate the erase.
The ability to fairly quickly resolve my hardware problem greatly impressed me. I expect I could get a similar level of service with a Samsung device at a non-Samsung retailer, or if I bought the phone originally through a mobile phone operator's storefront and brought it back to the same store for warranty, but there's no promise of that.
For something which is critical to the operation of my life, I have chosen to compromise on some desires and will likely continue to buy iPhones in the future simply because they work fairly well and when they don't I can get it fixed rather easily and with minimal downtime by Apple itself.