>The max steering angles of the phased arrays are much higher

You can't steer the antenna back and forth for every exchange between station and customer. What the steering may get you is increasing the coverage of an area currently underserved by the constellation, and maybe a slight increase in diameter of ground covered due to the geometry, at the cost of lower signal strength.

>And for the last few years, lasercoms can route traffic inside the constellation so a given sat doesn't need to be within sight of a ground station.

Did they finally implement satellite-to-satellite links? Fine, if that actually works, they can indeed extend the range much further. I don't know if I believe it, though.

The parent is correct. Look up have many antennas are on each Starlink sat. There are multiple dedicated antennas for customers and ground stations. There isn’t just one antenna or beam per satellite.

Also, lookup the number of ISLs in orbit. Starlink has been providing coverage for the middle of the ocean for years now. They have provided coverage to Pacific Islands that have lost their undersea cable connections.

> You can't steer the antenna back and forth for every exchange between station and customer.

Even ignoring that they have multiple arrays, they use separate antennas to talk to the base stations on a different frequency band.