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Glad you got things squared away and I hear you on Samsung's UI changes to Android. Both Samsung and Google are currently promising 7 years of software updates to their latest flagship phones, so as long as they aren't lost or broken, you may be able to avoid a phone replacement for a very long time.
If you're an Android user and don't desire an exceptionally rugged phone or other unique physical characteristics, it's hard to beat the Google Pixel phones. Android is literally developed on their hardware and earlier this year Google moved much of the Android open source project to "behind closed doors" where they may gain a larger monopoly over the Android market because of that. With Samsung, unless you reflash the phone, you also end up with a lot of Samsung and carrier bloat. Bundled software that may or may not be useful to you. Even on my Google Pixel, I've reflashed the phone with GrapheneOS to remove much of the stuff I don't want on my phone.
Your scenario of getting the phone for "free" is a situation where going with a major carrier makes sense. For "bring your own device", you can typically get the same phone service, or sometimes slightly reduced network priority, for significantly cheaper if you don't need the convenience of being able to walk into a store for the carrier like you can with T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. Each of those carriers have their own "flanker" brands where they sell the same network access for less, and then there are indy MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) that resell network access to the big 3 for less with their own more limited support. Some of these are more difficult to navigate and set up service with, but you can typically get an "unlimited" plan for $25-35/mo + tax (Guzzi content). I've been on Boost Mobile (previously Boost Infinite) for a few years now, which is the AT&T network with a fallback of using T-Mobile when that has poor coverage, and pay $26.69/mo total for "unlimited" where data is only throttled after 30 GB in a month.
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