If you give me a choice between buttery smooth >60Hz refresh rate animations, and better battery life, I'll choose the battery life 100% of the time. But that's just me. But then again, with the insides of a typical tablet being 90% battery these days (along with a little motherboard along one edge) maybe that's all a nonissue. Phones, on the other hand... my unambitious, cheap (from when you could still get half decent cheap phones) one goes two days on a charge easily, whereas a friend with an "advanced" phone struggles to get through one day with it, often running out during all-day outdoor adventures. Tradeoffs!

Phones use VRR displays, they don't always scale up all the way to 120Hz, only when justified by the content.

What's magical about 60 there? I'd naively think you'd just want VRR and some power saving render rate behavior rather than a fixed target framerate equal to the max framerate for all types of content all the time. The latter gives you neither good power saving nor good experience in most combinations.