Vice is seemingly not biased at all. (They push the point that mobiles are not throwaways by choosing the most expensive mobiles as if they were the standard. Most people I know just buy the cheapest Android they can find; those are definitely throwaways)
Canada might be similar, but outside of NA, people know exactly how much they pay for the handset and how much they play for the service (which is 5-10 times cheaper for similar limits), and as a result, most people don’t actually buy a flagship phone.
Frankly, most people in my life, family, friends, etc, are using flagship phones. I know people who keep said devices for 4+ years, but I genuinely don't know anyone using throw-away cheap Android phones. Those people who keep their phones forever, balk at the prices of new iPhones, fully knowing the "nice" ones go for $1000 or more.
I don't think my experience here is atypical. A few years ago, the price of a phone was heavily abstracted by the carriers, but that really is not the case anymore.
In many places in Europe, you can get reasonable monthly plans for ~$10; If you only use data, about half that. If you pay $1000 for 6 years of service, it puts the phone price in a completely different perspective than if you pay that for 18 months (which, last I checked US prices, was the case).
Well there are 100 Million iPhone users in the US (45% of the market). And the Representative that killed the Bill by requesting a year long study I'm sure has no conflicts of interest (Apple stock, Google Stock, hell no interest in the group that will be awarded the government contract to conduct the study)
Most people I know buy expensive phones, and many of them are in need of repair.
If you give a damn about the environment, I think it hardly matters how much it cost.