Not quite as old but my Mum's still using an iPhone 5s from around 2014 which she had from new. She's not into apps so again, works fine for her as she doesn't need to be able to install anything. Thankfully homekit is still working on this and she's able to use it to tell siri to open the garage when she gets home.
Obviously these are very much edge cases, you can't find many apps in the app store still working on these older models.
I myself only upgraded from an iPhone 7 this September when the 14 came out. I'd had the battery replaced by Apple last year as it was a free recall thing which did massively improve its performance but it did eventually become too much of a pain in the arse to keep using.
I've got an old iPhone 5 which I keep for use as an occasional wifi hotspot too.
Eight years would be a bit long, but 6 years certainly isn't (the reason for my upgrade was that the battery wouldn't hold a charge for a full day and the "get a new phone" vs "upgrade the battery" was one I went with the new phone).
One of my coworkers has an iPhone 6.
He’s replaced the battery but it’s still the same phone. They don’t care much for camera upgrades and it works for them.
This is simply wrong.
My wife's still has her IPhone 6S and she absolutely loves it. We are able to take advantage of Apple free battery replacement program a couple of years ago. She doesn't see the need to upgrade to new phones as Whatsapp, Facebook, Insta and Google Maps etc. work just fine on her device.
I, on the other hand, have gone through several Android Flagship products in this period.
For most people the hardware fails after 3 years lol