Weird. Even my A52s which is both older and much cheaper (like a quarter of the price!) than your S22 Ultra is on 1 January 2024. It still gets timely monthly updates.

I wonder if it's your provider being difficult here. The problem with branded (or sometimes even sold with contract) phones is that the carrier wants to meddle in the updates because they're afraid of issues on their network or something. And this can cause huge delays.

I always buy my phones separately, mainly because I hate contracts so I'm on prepay always but having unrestricted updates is another big benefit.