> asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, [...] before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".

'If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses'....Henry Ford

Nobody cares about repairability....until they are hit hard by it.

Anecdote: Around 5y ago, the lightning connector of my wife's iPhone died after 3y usage.

We brought it to an Apple Store and the official answer was "Sorry, we don't fix that on this model. Here is a 200€ discount on a new one"... The phone was still worth >900€ at the time.

Let's be clear: This kind of commercial practice are unacceptable both ecologically and ethically speaking. It is terrible customer service.

A lot of high end phones (outside Apple) at the time would have their USB-C port fixed in matter of few hours for <100€ in any random "I Fix it" store.

The battery is the exact same shit.