iCloud storage

If your phone is really frozen and the software has crashed then I doubt the software commands telling it to upload items to iCloud will work. You would also have to go in and enable iCloud Photos in it first which you can't do now.

I don't work for Apple, but to be fair, Apple has long provided iCloud for syncing many items including photos. It is a user's choice whether or not to have that feature activated. I have it activated on my phone which means that usually if I alter something on my phone it gets changed in iCloud too within a couple of minutes. Any technology can have unexpected issues simply because Apple cannot test all the unique combinations of things people can put on their phones. However, if my phone were to freeze I probably wouldn't lost more than a photo or two because I do use iCloud. I also have it set to backup the entire phone to iCloud.

Set up iCloud on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - https://support.apple.com/HT208681

I don't remember if Apple has that activated by default. If they don't then they will get people in your kind of situation who might say they should, but then they will also get another bunch of people who will think they tehmselves should decide what features get activated on a device. Can't win.

Some people may turn off iCloud Photos because Apple only provides 5 GB of storage for free. If you have a 64 GB phone with 50 GB of photos on it then you have to subscribe to more storage if you want your phone to automatically keep a copy of photos in iCloud. Again, user choice. I just make sure I transfer photos fro iCloud to my computer once I've take a couple of dozen.