If that saying is true, why buy Apple? Doesn't seem like the price correlates at all to the longevity of the product after seeing this thread.
Anecdotally, I've never had a phone only last 2 years... except one. While I buy the newest models of one's I like with groundbreaking features (ie the Motorola Atrix which had one of the first gesture finger print capable unlocks/an interesting desktop mode or the LG G5 which was the first dual camera phone with wide market release that I'm aware of) I always give my partner my old phone each time. Currently she has the V20 and it's still pulling a full days battery life. I haven't strictly bought Android but the one apple phone I did buy was around when they started slowing down device's drastically each OS rollout. It only managed a two year cycle before it got retired to the back up phone pile early.
If a phone can't last 4-5 years in my household I'd likely never buy that brand again.