iPhone camera and photo storage

I suspect that what you heard was referring to the discontinuance of the My Photo Stream service. It was one way of uploading recent photos so that you can view and import them on other devices. There has been no discontinuance of "photo storage functions."

For more information, see the following from Information about the My Photo Stream shutdown - Apple Support

What is My Photo Stream? 

My Photo Stream is an iCloud service that originally launched in 2011. It temporarily uploads the photos you take on one device so you can view them on any other device with My Photo Stream enabled, and import them to your library on that device if you like. Photos remain in My Photo Stream for 30 days — up to 1,000 photos at any given time — and are then automatically deleted from iCloud.

My Photo Stream is scheduled to be shut down on July 26, 2023. As part of this transition, new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from your devices will stop one month before, on June 26, 2023. Any photos uploaded to the service before that date will remain in iCloud for 30 days from the date of upload and will be available to any of your devices where My Photo Stream is currently enabled. By July 26, 2023, there will be no photos remaining in My Photo Stream, and the service will be shut down. 

My Photo Stream is a separate service from iCloud Photos. Moving forward, iCloud Photos is the best way to keep the photos and videos you take up to date across all your devices and safely stored in iCloud. If you already have iCloud Photos enabled on all of your devices, you don't need to do anything else — your photos are already uploaded and stored in iCloud.